Possible GUI OS for the Commander X16?

kelli217 · Post by **kelli217** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 5:48 am

I have lots of thoughts on the limits of what can be accomplished on this platform. Given such projects as GEOS, and Contiki, and Atari GOS, something really amazing is probably possible.

desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Tue Dec 22, 2020 11:06 am

The Final Cartridge 3 for the Commodore64 also had a fairly capable programmable GUI system built into the cartridge (but much simpler than GEOS). However I never actually used it to be honest. For me it wasn't anything more than a gimmick that I didn't really understand the benefits of. I may have used the notepad application once or twice to write and print a letter with in proportional font....

Also from what I can remember that GUI desktop was extensible with programs that you could write yourself, there was an 'sdk' of sorts to go with the cartridge. But I have never seen any user written application for it unfortunately.

Jakebullet70 · Post by **Jakebullet70** » Wed Dec 23, 2020 5:24 pm

On 11/29/2020 at 11:39 PM, BlueSpartan076 said:

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.

I agree, GEOS was written in a different time and really, what are you going to do with it?

Jakebullet70 · Post by **Jakebullet70** » Wed Dec 23, 2020 5:32 pm

For me i would like one in text mode mode. Not graphics.

ASM routines for windows (drawing, saving) and printing - getting text on the screen and then just standard BASIC that glues it all together. Store common color - system vars in banked memory.

That way the community can extend it. Something like this.

Fnord42 · Post by **Fnord42** » Wed Dec 23, 2020 7:59 pm

Ah, Turbo Vision. Good times. It was only a TUI library, though; you couldn't have several applications share the screen.

The concept of a text mode windowing system did work surprisingly well, though, even if it wasn't designed to do multitasking.

Fnord42 · Post by **Fnord42** » Wed Dec 23, 2020 8:06 pm

I just found out that Borland has released the Turbo Vision sources (MIT licensed) back in 1997(!) and there are still people working on/with it!

And yes, there's a Linux port. ?

Ffin72 · Post by **Ffin72** » Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:02 pm

On 11/28/2020 at 9:35 AM, kliepatsch said:

And this guy

He's known as flashjazzcat in the A8 scene. A very talented coder (and musician), he writes the firmware for a lot of the most popular A8 hardware expansions but his GOS is closed source atm, tied to those hardware expansions and still very much in the design phase: read the thread on it's development here.

Lorin Millsap · Post by **Lorin Millsap** » Thu Jan 14, 2021 6:29 pm

It already has it technically. Part of GEOS is already built in.

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desertfish · Post by **desertfish** » Fri Jan 29, 2021 10:57 pm

So I am making a thing

It's just a picture that is drawn though (640x240x4) and ~~currently is very slow to draw because all pixels are drawn individually in unoptimized loops. Also text is still missing as you can see. Work in progress, for giggles~~ Drawing routines are now fairly optimized ?

Lorin Millsap · Post by **Lorin Millsap** » Fri Jan 29, 2021 11:03 pm

We already have GEOS. It’s not fully working because priorities. But it is there. The draw routines we have in ROM are very fast Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk