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New GUI for the Atari 8-bit


flashjazzcat

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Do you think that a HyperCard clone could be squeezed on a 128K machine, 320K maybe? Was one of my favorite toys back when I had a Mac Plus. They had a version for the IIgs as well.

No idea. The way to do big applications will be via multiple, interconnected 16KB banks of code and data compiled at $4000. Then only limit then will be the number of available banks.

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Its always fun to make videos for atari8warez

:)

 

It took a hell of a long time, but finally I can offer some kind of response:

 

 

:)

 

Unfortunately, although the system remains perfectly responsive (as we always asserted it would), I can't show too much else going on yet because there's a bug in the timed sleep routines which sometimes results in one of several Profiler tasks dying for good when windows are moved around, and it's a complete and absolute nightmare to debug, since the tasks on timed wake-ups are held as a linked list of relative values. Needs fixing for the demo...

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I am a purist (among other things), and I want this to be Atari only, or at least Atari first. There is no need to port this to other inferior systems. The only benefit I can see is if it was eventually made to support 65c816 CPUs, (for Rapidus and the like), then it might be nice on an Apple 2gs. Let's have the Atari version first, then the 816 version (for Atari 816s), then think about the rest.

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I would not for a single moment consider coding for any other platform first. The porting talk is just technical speculation, and getting the stock A8 version done is a sufficiently mammoth task on its own. But it's fun to wonder nevertheless. ;)

 

Other machines may support the same graphical resolution and use the same or similar CPU, but we're still relying on some of the Atari's unique features here, aside from raw clock speed.

 

EDIT: I think (hope) I nailed the sleep timer problem: looks like it was a bug in my funky list pointer code which moves forward and backward pointers between the X and Y registers when deleting nodes.

 

EDIT: Still broken... :mad:

Edited by flashjazzcat
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pun intended ;]

Never noticed that - good spot. :)

 

Unfortunately my latest diagnosis was also wrong...

 

Ack... wrong:

	txa
	sta Process.NextWakeUp,y
	lda Process.PrevWakeUp,x
	sta Process.PrevWakeUp,y
	pha
	tya
	sta Process.PrevWakeUp,x
	pla
	beq AtHead
	tay
	txa
	sta Process.NextWakeUp,y
	rts
AtHead
	sty Process.WakeUpHead
	rts

Right:

	txa
	sta Process.NextWakeUp,y
	lda Process.PrevWakeUp,x
	sta Process.PrevWakeUp,y
	pha
	tya
	sta Process.PrevWakeUp,x
	pla
	beq AtHead
	tax ; previous node
	tya ; new node
	sta Process.NextWakeUp,x
	rts
AtHead
	sty Process.WakeUpHead
	rts
	.endl

On entry, Y holds PID being added to the wake-up list, and X holds the insertion point in the list. I'd have gotten rid of the previous node pointer, but it makes deleting nodes much faster, since there's no need to walk the list. Anyway: hopefully that's the bug.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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I am a purist (among other things), and I want this to be Atari only, or at least Atari first. There is no need to port this to other inferior systems. The only benefit I can see is if it was eventually made to support 65c816 CPUs, (for Rapidus and the like), then it might be nice on an Apple 2gs. Let's have the Atari version first, then the 816 version (for Atari 816s), then think about the rest.

 

The IIgs had a GREAT GUI OS that was very similar to MacOS. Even has a full version of HyperCard and network support. Competing with that would be tough. And kind of pointless. There's already a decent library of software for it too.

 

The C64 had GEOS. GEOS was available for the Apple II as well.

 

The only real attempt at a full GUI environment for the Atari 8-bit was Diamond GOS, which was kinda cool but ultimately didn't perform real well nor had much in the way of significant software developed for it. It came pretty late in the game too.

 

And with the way some things like the cursor are done, wouldn't a port to the C64 be kind of a pain anyway? I'd rather see this be Atari-specific and take advantage of everything the funky chipset has to offer personally. Compromises to go multi-platform would likely hurt performance.

Edited by kogden
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Pragmatically speaking, it's worth noting that the IIGS GUI didn't support full multitasking (certainly not pre-emptive) and did the "desk accessory" thing. GEOS wasn't multitasking either; not only that but it didn't have movable windows in its original incarnation (many limitations were down to memory and code size, so are understandable and the product is still remarkable). So the existing GUIs on those systems aren't necessarily the final word on the matter.

 

Practically speaking, however, I agree with the above. The Atari is the poor relation in terms of GUIs and I think the platform deserves our exclusive focus for the foreseeable future, especially since there's another twenty thousand lines or so of code still to write. ;)

Edited by flashjazzcat
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I would not for a single moment consider coding for any other platform first. The porting talk is just technical speculation, and getting the stock A8 version done is a sufficiently mammoth task on its own. But it's fun to wonder nevertheless. ;)

As my first computer was C128, I can see gui like this working on it no problem. 128K ram, 2Mhz cpu + hardware sprites.... I'm proud of what we did with pointer drawing routine, but must admit pointer with hardware sprites is simple as nothing else :)

 

We can think about porting once first usable applications are written for it... We'll have to wait couple more years so no hurry ;)

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