Some people have picked up on Costa and have spread to various parts of the internet, and I figured I’d write a post linking to some of the places I’ve found mentions of Costa online - both to showcase them, and to link back to those sites as a “thank you” for mentioning my hobby project.
First up is the website Interesting DOS programs. The author has done a great job at finding exactly what the title promises - a long list of interesting DOS programs, which is regularly updated. As of this writing, it was last updated on January 17th. The site is nicely divided into categories, and Costa can be found under the “Applications” group. Anyone using DOS, DOSBox or similar should give pay this site a visit.
Costa has even found it’s way onto YouTube, in a few different videos.
YouTuber Open Source has made a video titled The best GUI for DOS you haven’t heard of: COSTA. The title alone fills me with joy, as it’s always a treat to see someone enjoy something you’ve put a lot of work into. At the time of this writing, the video is just shy of 25.000 views. Pretty decent for a niche hobby project. The guy has some other interesting videos on his channel about old software, and also some music and other stuff. Give it a look, I’m certain you’ll find something interesting there!
Axle Student is another YouTube channel which features Costa. He has made a series of videos on the subject of FreeDOS Development tools, in which he use Costa as the program launcher for shortcuts to the various utilities he’s using, and he also spends some time going through Costa and how it can be used. I think it’s really cools, so be sure to check out the channel and part 1, part 2 and part 3 of the video series.
I have created a playlist on YouTube, where I will try to add any video I find that somehow mentions or includes costa.
A repository of FreeDOS-compatible freeware and open-source software, freedos-repo features various categories of software. Costa is featured under the “Program launchers” category.
The main subject of Multiboot Windows is topics about multi-booting various versions of Windows and other systems on older machines, and it’s an interesting read for sure. The site also features a huge collection of DOS GUIs, alternate Windows 3.x shells, and DOS/Windows file managers. Costa is featured in the DOS GUIs section, and the author has provided a bootable VM image of DOS and Costa.
The author also uploaded Costa 1.6.0 to the Internet Archive.
The homepage of a vintage computer enthusiast, Vintage2000 features many pages and subpages for Mac, DOS, Windows, Linux, mobile devices and others, each with a bunch of interesting stuff. There’s a lot here, so be sure to check it out. Costa is mentioned on the DOS GUI Shells page.
Although no longer maintained, Data Components - GUI Reviews features an impressive collection of DOS GUIs written in QuickBASIC - in fact, I’m sure it’s the biggest collection ever with a staggering 240 reviews written. The author, Todd Suess, was a regular visitor on my own GUI review site back in the day, and he and I had many discussions in the forums about GUIs, as we were both big contributors to the QB GUI community. The site features reviews of all versions of Costa from 0.0.1 up to 0.9.1, and is absolutely worth a visit.
Like the site above, the focus of The GUI Blog is to review various QuickBASIC GUIs. The site is no longer maintained, and you might get a warning about missing https support, but it has some good and noteworthy QuickBASIC GUIs in it’s collection. Take a look around, and be sure to check the review of Costa 1.0!