Guest post by A2osX is a cooperative, event-driven multitasking kernel (meaning it is applications that are responsible to give back control to kernel). Its principal goal is to collect all “genius” 65c02 pieces of code ever written here and there, concentrated in the same environment (including IP Stack & HTTPD/TELNETD…, GUI & graphical tools…). “Complete working place”, no needing any more to reboot to switch between tons of diskettes!
A2osX is designed to work on any “stock” 128k Apple //e, with no additional hardware.
The Apple II turned 40 this year and it still has a lot of life left in it.
…got an extra = and a couple quotes.
Interesting project, and I was just musing last week at KansasFest that not much had exploited the Enhanced //e and the //c’s upgrades – most 8-bit development, outside of games, as of late targeted a ][+ with a language card.
Hopefully the design is such that preemptive multitasking can be used when a timer interrupt is available, such as the //c, IIGS, or a mouse card in the //e (seeing as a GUI is planned, a mouse card may well be there).
What file system(s) does it use? I poked around on the github site a bit, and didn’t see anything about that. It boots from ProDOS, so does that mean that it uses the ProDOS file system?
The ability to use a local Z80 is also really interesting. A great deal could be done with that.
While it was in no way multitasking, I found a hack that allowed 128k systems to run DOS 3.3 and ProDOS concurrently, each one in its own 64k bank. That was exceptionally useful. If only I’d had two disk drives, or a hard drive at the time…
Here’s the github address; HTML isn’t rendering this properly: https://github.com/burniouf/A2osX
Edited 2017-07-31 01:34 UTC