I hope one day we can push graphics to the limits on every machine, but you have to remember its cross platform and you are in some ways tied to technicalities of not just the machine you are using but of ever machine symbos supports. Of course you can just go full screen and code yourself to the video hardware if you want to lose cross platform, but keep many of the OS benefits of symbos.

This perhaps is a debate for another time, maybe next year when we've achieved the goals of the 3.0 release. Certainly as the coder of the symstudio development sytem I'm very interested in making symbos a full screen game OS, but that includes balancing act of how machine specific you allow grapics to go. I considered many times how a mapping tool, or art package might be integrated across various machines. Prodatron already has a yet unused graphics library that is more in keeping with games than has been used so far in symbos. Yes pacman is great, and a pretty accurate representation of the game, but its very simple and moves few graphics about. For instance what can be achieved currently is pretty visually cool. This is a screen of an arkanoid game I have been working on running on Symbos version 2.0

Version 3.0 will see this graphics extension in action and we will get better than this with real software sprites, and the ability to move more faster.

Nice!

I love the welcome screen !!!

NICE!!!! and AMAZING !!

Wow! Fantastic!!!

Little note: RGB SCART cable recommended

External joysticks are common, just need a adapter. All old user have it
It is the simple type. The Autofire not work with this, but I think this is not important to SymbOS

Anyway I planing develop new Boxsoft Joy interface clone which are do conversion for the two joysticks and also for PS/2 mouse (internal use PS/2 -> MSX conversion and this connected to EP at similar way as the old Neos mouse do)

So add ext joy support, don't bad idea!
But the switching mode with INS also will be great! Do it both if possible!

Sorry, I was busy most of the last hours, but now I could finally try it on the real hardware:

Cool

http://ep.lgb.hu/jsep/demo.new/?disk=SymbOS-EP-Full.dsk
It seems to work with my web based emulator (you should click run button, then load "sym") however I can't use that too much since ALT (at least for me) is not configured to be passed to the browser on Linux, I use ALT key for custom key definitions and to temporary switch between Hun/Eng keyboard layout. Anyway The clock on the desktop counts, so the system should work otherwise. Also, you may want to use the boxsoft mouse stuff to support mouse, then I would be able to use mouse with the emulator mentioned above too.

I don't know how uncommon to have external joysticks, maybe it was told by me, sorry about that: I can only assume that since EP has internal joystick, there is not _as_ much need for a joystick as with other 8 bit micros to have some fun for games, though it's better to have an external, indeed. At least I have no joystick for EP, I meant Sorry for the confusion if it was me who gave you not so correct information about this. But I don't play with computers (and didn't) so it can be a reason I think differently than most of the people.

About the unexpanded EP: if you have Zozo's EXOS, there is a key to be pressed during reset, then it will behave as you have only 128K RAM (with z80 page 0 etc). I can't remember which key / key combination it is though, but it was mentioned here too in one of the previous posts, as far as I can remember.

It's still a good idea to support pointer movement with internal joy, at least I like your "switchable" idea of yours.

Many thanks again especially to LGB and Zozosoft!!! You made this possible!

Well, it's my pleasure if I could help a bit, and it's enough for thanking to have SymbOS on EP128, more than enough I think.

- I have a lot of read-retries when loading from disc

Yes and using a slow step rate. I suggest the loader ask the defaul step rate (variable 73) and pass to floppy driver.
Your card also have a 1772 then Step Rate 2 suggested.
Put to EXDOS.INI (like as AUTOEXEC on PC):
VAR 73,3
LOAD SYM

Bigger problem with the floppy driver, don't work above 4Mhz
Report error 26, and once at 10MHz totaly hang-up, pointer not moving. After switched back to 4Mhz, pointer moving again, but still error 26.
If tried to load at any turbo speed, don't working, even switch back to 4Mhz and try again.
If started at turbo and switch back to 4MHz then try to load then switch back to turbo are working way.
(EXDOS loading works with any turbo, and even when you switch clockspeed as crazy under loading )

When loaded from drive B: and drive A: not exist, at accessing drive A: looks nothing, no error displayed.

Anyway make a problem when loaded from drive B: because components searched from drive A:
I suggest the loader ask the Default Drive at loading, and pass to the kernel as boot drive, it is the variable 71.

Task manager CPU time calculating will be crazy when CPU speed switched. At 4Mhz idle display about 6% usage, then switch to 6 then about 0%, ok this look good, but when switch to 7.12 or 10 then display 60-70% usage.
When started 10Mhz, display about 4% at idle, but when switched back to 4Mhz then display about 50-70% usage

The joystick pointer only move to four directions. Will be better if 8 directions can be used.