Author Topic: SymbOS (Read 609236 times)

Z80System · « **Reply #240 on:** 2014.November.11. 01:06:52 »

Quote

Prodatron is too modest to say so, but he buys pretty much all the cool hardware and supports it in Symbos. If an Enterprising Enterprise user created an MP3 hardware decoder or Ethernet, prodatron would soon have a driver so it could be used.

Ah ... it's the answer already ...

Trebmint · « **Reply #241 on:** 2014.November.11. 01:33:25 »

From a coders point of view unless you're targeting a specific piece of hardware there is almost certainly going to be either an API or library that will work on every similar piece of hardware. Im looking forward to the networking API with 3.0 soon hopefully
In fact from a coders viewpoint once you've altered your thinking to the structure it is almost more impressive behind the scenes than looking at the GUI in action... and it 100% solid too.

I've worked on a number of 8bit GUI's that pretended to be the real thing. Symbos is the real deal IMHO

Z80System · « **Reply #242 on:** 2014.November.11. 02:01:02 »

Quote

unless you're targeting a specific piece of hardware

Yes, I asked the hardware driver questions because I created a PS/2 keyboard interface and now I am creating a PS/2 mouse interface,
and the keyboard is hardware compatible to the EP's internal keyboard, but the mouse will not be hardware compatible to the mouse (the boxsoft mouse interface) what SymbOS will use first -> I will not have a working mouse in SymbOS ... but SymbOS have to have a mouse ...

But I understood (as far as I did it well

), that the hardware support is totally internal to and controlled by SymbOS (except of the mentioned MSX storage part) and not open toward additional hardware developers.

So I have to make a hardware compatible (to the supported EP mouse) PS/2 mouse, or I have to wait till SymbOS will support my mouse, too.

Trebmint · « **Reply #243 on:** 2014.November.11. 10:28:16 »

Quote from: Z80System on 2014.November.11. 02:01:02

Yes, I asked the hardware driver questions because I created a PS/2 keyboard interface and now I am creating a PS/2 mouse interface,
and the keyboard is hardware compatible to the EP's internal keyboard, but the mouse will not be hardware compatible to the mouse (the boxsoft mouse interface) what SymbOS will use first -> I will not have a working mouse in SymbOS ... but SymbOS have to have a mouse ...

But I understood (as far as I did it well ), that the hardware support is totally internal to and controlled by SymbOS (except of the mentioned MSX storage part) and not open toward additional hardware developers.

So I have to make a hardware compatible (to the supported EP mouse) PS/2 mouse, or I have to wait till SymbOS will support my mouse, too.

Its a tricky subject, because if you've made yourself hardware of course you will have to design drivers for symbos to work with them. However those drivers should work with the API so from another coders/users viewpoint they are abstracted from the hardware through an API
In most cases Prodatron will create those drivers if the hardware is/was available to buy... like for instance in the case with MSX FDC of which there are dozens of variants, prodatron has tried to get as many working as possible.
The wide range of hardware symbos works with is one of the totally cool things about it... and obviously in the case of the symbiface it has been designed for the OS and OS for the hardware. Its even been discussed how something like a updated symbiface hardware device might be cross platform to a degree also, meaning a levelling of ability of the symbos running machines. The idea's we have for networking for instance are very very cool and it would be great if all the computers could be part of it

Z80System · « **Reply #244 on:** 2014.November.11. 11:19:54 »

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The wide range of hardware symbos works with is one of the totally cool things about it...

Yes, I just realized it in a post of me some posts earlier, too ...

But my mouse probably can be a blind spot even in this case ... because the raw hardware handling assembly code would be 5-10 assembly instructions for that only,
but the hardware itself is not so significant, probably SymbOS's task list have (and will have) much more significant entries in priority ...

But when you make a hardware compatible (to the original EP internal keyboard) PS/2 keyboard to the EP,
then you have to assembly (or wire) it to the inside of the EP, because the original EP keyboard interface is not broken out to a connector of the EP.

Hardware compatible PS/2 keyboard is important, because then you can play the games with the PS/2 keyboard, and HW compatibility is cool anyway ...

But when you did that (assembly inside the EP) then there is a very simple, much nicer (and easier) way to communicate with a mouse than the boxsoft mouse interface way ...

(Of course, HW compatibility with boxsoft's mouse is possible, still ...

)

Trebmint · « **Reply #245 on:** 2014.November.11. 12:34:04 »

Well I'm sure Prodatron will help with you're non standard mouse/keyboard combo

Its quite cool as people suggest things and they just suddenly happen... like MP3 support, Video, 16 colour on MSX for instance.

Prodatron · « **Reply #246 on:** 2014.November.11. 13:31:36 »

Disc access is now working fine!

Will answer soon regarding mouse support! (currently in a hurry)

Zozosoft · « **Reply #247 on:** 2014.November.11. 13:34:36 »

Quote from: Prodatron on 2014.November.11. 13:31:36

Disc access is now working fine!

.DSK?

for testing on real machine.

lgb · « **Reply #248 on:** 2014.November.11. 13:49:29 »

.DSK?

for testing on my emulator.

Zozosoft · « **Reply #249 on:** 2014.November.11. 16:15:11 »

Little note: at 1984 november shipped the first 100 EP64 machine to developers and the press.
Now at 2014 november the SymbOS will be a good 30th Birthday surprise for the Enterprise!

Prodatron · « **Reply #250 on:** 2014.November.11. 16:52:11 »

The current loader doesn't include the block allocation, so it sets up the block to a fixed 128K configuration (#f8, #f9, #fa, #ff for SymbOS bank 0, #fb-#fe for SymbOS bank 1). And you will need to boot it on a 128K machine anyway, as it assumes, that the Zero page is #F8, otherwise it will crash when it tries to start. It's only a problem of the loader, the kernel itself is already able to handle any dynamic configs with the small lookup table we discussed. This missing allocation is what I want to change now for the next step.

But if it's still usefull for you, I can upload a DSK

Quote from: Zozosoft on 2014.November.11. 16:15:11

Little note: at 1984 november shipped the first 100 EP64 machine to developers and the press.
Now at 2014 november the SymbOS will be a good 30th Birthday surprise for the Enterprise!

What a cool timing!

So I need to hurry up with finishing a full-working version during this month!

Zozosoft · « **Reply #251 on:** 2014.November.11. 17:01:03 »

Quote from: Prodatron on 2014.November.11. 16:52:11

This missing allocation is what I want to change now for the next step.

I can write routine which do it.

Quote

But if it's still usefull for you, I can upload a DSK

Don't problem! I can build any EP configurations

Anyway my speed memory test have a option for boot up only with 128K (or a 64K

)

Quote

What a cool timing! So I need to hurry up with finishing a full-working version during this month!

At 1984 december 14 arrived the first machines to the shops

edoz · « **Reply #252 on:** 2014.November.11. 18:39:55 »

Quote from: Z80System on 2014.November.10. 22:40:03

Hmmm ... that MSX seems powerful 8 bit computer ...

Is that scrolled virtual desktop feature a common one, or MSX specific only ?

(Maybe EP could do that vertically (scrolling) with multi desktop (amiga like dragging of screens/desktops) simultaneously ... )

Hi. In my movie The first MSX you see is a standard MSX which is only upgraded to 7 Mhz. Indeed it is playing a MP3 file using a MP3 decoder card for MSX (sunrise MP3 player)
This is also working on a standard 3.5 Mhz standard MSX. But you need a storage device in SymbOS to stream the MP3 bits to the MP3 card. (This is done by the Z80)

The next screen is a windows PC which runs SymStudio. Which is currently the best IDE to create apps for SymbOS. Currently I'm working on explore.exe (with help of Trebmint and Prodatron of course)

The next display you see in the movie is a MSX Turbo-R. (last released MSX) In this MSX I use the GFX9000 (Yamaha v9990) video chip which is in a subslot of the MSX.
The Yamaha video chip is supported in SymbOS and is a very powerful extend graphic card. (From what I know the v9990 was planned to be inside a MSX3 but this one was never released but the chip was created luckly

The v9990 is also supported on a standard MSX 2.

In an other movie you can see the speed differents between a turbo-r and a normal MSX (Where the first MSX is a turbo-r and the second a normal one)
Other movie

edoz · « **Reply #253 on:** 2014.November.11. 18:59:34 »

Quote from: Prodatron on 2014.November.11. 13:31:36

Disc access is now working fine!

Will answer soon regarding mouse support! (currently in a hurry)

VERY NICE!!! to see this screenshot!!

lgb · « **Reply #254 on:** 2014.November.11. 19:16:58 »

It seems there are some MSX users here

As far as I know, the graphics controllers in MSX computers (TMS9918, V9938, V9958, or maybe even V9900) has own dedicated video RAM and not shared with the CPU. So you need instruct the video chip to do something with the video RAM (afaik there are some "hardware accelerated" operations as well can be instructed?). But if it's true, how can someone play video on MSX when it's always slower to modify the video RAM by video chip ops and not direct video RAM writes by the CPU itself? My question also remains for the rest of a SymbOS like software: without direct video RAM access how this can be implemented at a sane speed? Sorry if I asked something stupid, I don't know too much about MSX machines, really ...

Author Topic: SymbOS (Read 609236 times)

Z80System

Re: SymbOS

Trebmint

Re: SymbOS

Z80System

Re: SymbOS

Trebmint

Re: SymbOS

Z80System

Re: SymbOS

Trebmint

Re: SymbOS

Prodatron

Re: SymbOS

Zozosoft

Re: SymbOS

lgb

Re: SymbOS

Zozosoft

Re: SymbOS

Prodatron

Re: SymbOS

Zozosoft

Re: SymbOS

edoz

Re: SymbOS

edoz

Re: SymbOS

lgb

Re: SymbOS