XCommander

[JimmyDansbo]

It has taken a lot longer than I anticipated and there is still a long way to go, but finally I have something that is visually interesting.

panelswithcontent.gif (3.42 MiB) Viewed 6911 times

XCommander has two panels/panes/windows to ease navigation of different devices, partitions and directories. It works in all the official textmode resolutions, but in low resolution, only 1 panel is shown at a time.

The goal is to have a file manager that is able to browse the local sd card and any other drive that gets connected to the Commander X16 such as Pi1541, SD2IEC and ofcourse the old Commodore (compatible) drives.
This should make the Commander X16 perfect for copying software from old discs to modern sd card.

I will update this space with my progress...

[AndyMt]

This looks awesome ! Will it be able to execute PRG and BAS files? I recall you discussed this recently.
I started implementation of a "Launcher" and first investigated how to execute a program - which I solved. My solution doesn't require any resident part of the program to be left in memory. Any executed PRG will kind of think the X16 was just booted now (at least my testing seems to indicate that).

So if you are interested in that approach, let me know.

[JimmyDansbo]

My plan is, indeed, to be able to launch/execute .BAS and .PRG files.
I would very much be interested in your approach.

[AndyMt]

Ok, I suggest to continue by direct messages or on the Discord. What would you prefer?

[JimmyDansbo]

Life is going to be in the way of programming for the next 1½ week.
It may be better to continue with direct message here, then I am not going to "ping" you when I reply on odd times of the day

[TomXP411]

Launching programs is pretty straightforward:

1. Print the LOAD and RUN commands to the screen, in the right places.
2. Move the cursor to the home position.
3. Push two CRs in to the keyboard buffer (there's an API call now to do just that.)
4. Terminate your program.

When the computer returns to BASIC, it will consume the keyboard buffer, execute the two commands, and go from there.

There are some other ways to do it, but this (so far) has worked with every program I've thrown at it with my little menu program.

[AndyMt]

Yes, that's what I came up with, too . Plus changing directory etc.