At the end of 2000 I watched some GEOS-pages and asked myself, why not making such a system on CPC, too. Most CPCs have 128K (most C64 only have 64K), a screen-resolution of 320×200 with 4 colours (C64 only has 2 colours for each 8×8 area in 320×200) and some more advantages. So the idea of the SymbOS-Project was born. SymbOS stands for “SYmbiosis Multitasking Based Operating System“. SymbOS should become a demonstration, what could be possible on CPC since the last 20 years. I want to give everything to SymbOS what a modern OS needs. Real preemptive Multitasking, a dynamic memory-management for up to 576K and more and a totaly MS-Windows-like GUI are the three most important things.
Impressive project, and lovely retro ’90s website.
Indeed a nice endeaver, and cool it’s still being maintained. But there’s no news: the last update (3.0) was in June.
I read 2.1 instead. Some people are complaining on the MSX forum that the coder doesn’t have release the source code of the kernel so they won’t “touch” it. Lame excuse because even if the whole system is a big hack, it’s still rather impressive what these 8 bits things are capable of.
I find any 8-bit OS absolutely fascinating. The hardware is so small in scope that any OS at all seems entirely counter-productive! The CPUs themselves offer nothing in the way of ‘true’ Operating System support, which didn’t come in to place in the mainstream until the 16-bit CPUs — with the exception of the awesome, though sadly uncommon, Motorola 6809 which supported true position-free code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809
I’ve tried SymbOS out and whilst it’s incredibly impressive I’m not a fan of how it copies too much of Windows, rather than being true to the purpose and needs of the 8-bit micros.
There’s always something like this;
http://www.lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=107
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tltiZvtTaQE
May have to eventually add this to my 130XE, but then I just bought a Falcon030 and am going to be having fun with it for a while.
Don’t forget to put something like NVDI to have a less frustrating video throughput.
Ah of course, I’m hoping someone runs another batch of the SuperVidel upgrade and the CT60e is released so I can have another 060 in the house (the A4000D needs to be re-setup, but it’s pretty fast for what it is!)
Those 8 bit game graphics used to stimulate phantasy in a very special way.
Agreed, this one looks amazing for it;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTbDx-JX3QM