Possible GUI OS for the Commander X16?

BlueSpartan076 · Post by **BlueSpartan076** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 8:48 am

Would someone be able to make a GUI Operating System for the Commander X16? Like GEOS, GEM, Amiga Workbench, or Atari TOS?

BlueSpartan076 · Post by **BlueSpartan076** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 8:51 am

Maybe call it Comm OS or XOS?

kliepatsch · Post by **kliepatsch** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 9:35 am

It would definitely be possible. Apart from GEOS there is even some more places where people can draw inspiration from. By incident, I did some reading in the direction of GUIs for 8 bit systems and came across this 6502 multitasking OS which hasn't been finished yet AFAIK:

And this guy said, he borrowed a lot of ideas from SymbOS (http://www.symbos.de/). There is even a Wikipedia entry for that OS, providing some insights in how it was made (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS).

Furthermore, the source code for GEOS is available. Michael Steil and others worked on reverse engineering the binaries and did a pretty good job on making the code readable (well ... I'm no expert by any means, and I just looked at parts of it very briefly).

https://github.com/mist64/geos

If you scroll down to the readme on that github page, you will find information on how to port this GEOS to other 6502 platforms. I don't know how much work this would be, but it seems to be possible!

Quote

Machine-specific Code

In case you want to adapt the source for other 6502-based systems, you will want to know which parts have C64 dependencies.

All C64-specific code can be easily recognized: Since all C64 symbols have to be imported from c64.inc, you can tell which source files have C64 depencency by looking for that include. Remove the include to see which parts of the code are platform-specific.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 4:30 pm

The X16 already has GEOS, although it's not totally in a working state yet. You just have to load the APPS image as an SD card and type "GEOS".

kliepatsch · Post by **kliepatsch** » Sat Nov 28, 2020 4:34 pm

ah yes, I totally forgot that ?

BlueSpartan076 · Post by **BlueSpartan076** » Sun Nov 29, 2020 9:37 pm

On 11/28/2020 at 10:30 AM, Ender said:

The X16 already has GEOS, although it's not totally in a working state yet. You just have to load the APPS image as an SD card and type "GEOS".

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaah i actually didnt read the faq's until after posting this. ? i feel so stupid XD

BlueSpartan076 · Post by **BlueSpartan076** » Sun Nov 29, 2020 9:39 pm

On 11/28/2020 at 10:30 AM, Ender said:

The X16 already has GEOS, although it's not totally in a working state yet. You just have to load the APPS image as an SD card and type "GEOS".

i do think that the commander x16 should have its own built-from-the-ground-up GUI OS though. like its own design not GEOS.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Mon Nov 30, 2020 12:30 pm

That is an enormous task @BlueSpartan076 and I also feel it will only be useful to / used by a tiny fraction of the Cx16 users so not worth the effort. But hey that's my opinion ?

John Chow Seymour · Post by **John Chow Seymour** » Wed Dec 02, 2020 10:26 pm

I have no interest in a GUI for the X16. It's just not that kind of computer.

That said, part of what's fun about the X16, for hobbyists, is to tackle various difficult programming challenges. If someone (or a team) wanted to make a bespoke X16 GUI, I'd probably follow the project's progress with interest, even if I never actually used the end product. Do it for the challenge!

paulscottrobson · Post by **paulscottrobson** » Thu Dec 03, 2020 7:24 am

Might be an interesting challenge to update the display fast enough.