[Coco] Why haven't we got this?!!

[Michael Kerpan]

Actually, SymbOS does run on standard Z80 hardware. While it did run
on an FPGA "super-CPC", it also ran well on normal CPC/CPC+ hardware,
as long as there was some expansion RAM available. I've run it on an
emulated CPC with the only non-standard thing enabled being expansion
RAM and it's more resposive than you'd think. It was obviously more
fun to use if you had the Symbiface II (an IDE/CF interface designed
by the same folks who wrote SymbOS), but if you didn't mind swapping
disks, it could be used without one. The MSX version was even more
impressive given that it actually supported a fairly wide array of
add-on hardware from multiple vendors, including multiple storage
controllers, an enhanced video card and even an MP3 decoding module.
The main problem with Symbos wasn't speed but the lack of useful
software. Some of the included apps were quite clever (the music
player and the included PacMan clone were especially nice), but key
things like a text editor never got off the ground and thrid party
development was essentially nil.

Mike

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 9:24 AM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Nick, after further investigation, all the videos I can find on youtube featuring Symbos and Amstrad are being run on the Amstrad CPC which is basically an FPGA super Amstrad.
> The one video you linked that actually shows the original Amstrad shows absolutlely nothing that can't be currently done in OS9. The video just shows a Multivue like screen clicking some menu choices. Yes, the menus are a little more like "Windows" but that's just a matter of where you put them and how you arrange them.
>
> The video with the music is definately an emulator as it's a "screenshot" from a PC (or from the FPGA itself?). This is the "impressive" video. If you notice when he clicks on "drives" in the menu choices he gets file selections almost instantaniously and programs run in a blink of an eye. ummmmm Even a PC with an intel 486 wasn't that fast. That's running on modern day equipment not an 8-bit Z80. I get the same results in Nitros9 on an overclocked VCC on my AMD Quadcore machine
>
> Basically, I found the same for the other listed machines as well. Videos of the real thing weren't much more than a "multivue like" interface and the interesting videos were FPGA emulators.
>
> This being said, these guys have put a lot of work into this and it looks really good. The rescaleable/resizable/relocatable/overlaying windows was something the OS9 upgrade team was working on in the early 90s when Tandy and Microware pulled the plug. Just read all the notes and docs on the Brother Jeremy Upgrade disks. All this was being done. A lot of it was completed. No one knows where the sources went. I'm sure Boisy, Alan deKok and others looked pretty hard to find them but from the notes in the nitros9 repo, most of what they got, they had to disassemble from Brother Jeremy's disks and if it was written in C, then it was (for the most part) lost. Those disks only included the "finished" features and none of the planned and unfinished stuff.
>
> What the Symbos developer did was take a lot of these features and integrated them into an OS9 like OS then added support and drivers for the "super" features of the FPGA emulators. Most of which will run only on the FPGA super machines with the basics being able to run on the originals.
>
> Again, it's pretty impressive stuff. The only reason we don't have this in Coco and OS9, is that every time someone starts a project to "expand" the capabilities of the Coco, in FPGA or RPi or any other "project" system, they get baraged with "That's NOT a Coco !" and "The Coco didn't do that !" and "I only want it if I can run my 1984 floppy drive that only runs when I clean the heads and beat on it with a hammer for 10 minutes" and then everyone else is wanting Windows 8 features and unreal additions.
> They usually just give up in frustration.
>
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>
>
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
> http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Marentes <nickma at optusnet.com.au>
> To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Thu, Jan 23, 2014 1:03 am
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Why haven't we got this?!!
>
>
> Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at ...> writes:
>
>>
>>
>> Nick, I'm not embarrassed at all.... Do some digging in that website.
>> I think you'll find that front page to be quite misleading and stretching
> the truth quite a bit.
>> Most of those screenshots were from a soupped up fpga (or something
> similar) running a highly modified
>> emulator with capabilities that the original machines never had.. First,
> most of those machines nor
>> their cpus was capable of doing what they are stating.
>> Let's see... memory bank switching up to 1024k, multple windows, up to 63k
> per process,,,,,
>> Hmm.... sounds really, really familiar.... The GUI looks a lot
> like...hmmmm......
>> Me thinks they were looking at another very familiar OS when they started
> this...
>
>
> Hope you're right. Maybe they are showing it running on a PC via an emulator?
>
>
> Here's some YouTube videos of it in action expressly showing/stateing it to
> be running on real hardware. Does the Amstrad have an accelerator card?
>
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_sdtyWPrAM
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ish4ReOjdIw (ignore overlaid backing music)
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco