Kaz atarionline.pl Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 (edited) Good news for fans of graphical user interfaces. GEOS 2.0 was ported from Commodore to Atari by a Polish Commodore fan: Maciej "YTM" Witkowiak from the demoscene group Elysium. You can read (listen if you know Polish) about it on AtariOnline.pl: http://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=nowinki&ucat=1&subaction=showfull&id=1668428074 The project is posted on GitHub and well described in English, so I invite you to read it. You can help the author in using the SIO (floppy disk, printer), because he has not done it yet. https://github.com/ytmytm/geos-atari Edited November 14, 2022 by Kaz atarionline.pl 32 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 Wow - checking to make sure its not April Fools day - great stuff! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 Perhaps you can port Hiassoft's HiSIO code for disk access? Source code is here: https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#hipatch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 so far it does not have any disk routines, only prebuild RAMdisk. incredible feat nonetheless. It would be schmick to get it working with fujinet ndos I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ilmenit Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 13 minutes ago, ivop said: Perhaps you can port Hiassoft's HiSIO code for disk access? Source code is here: https://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#hipatch If it's compiled with cc65 then there is a full support in this package for SIO access (over standard system calls). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 (edited) Very cool! Already providing better performance than GEOS on a C64 (which is not very good). Edited November 14, 2022 by MrFish 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peri Noid Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 I played with it yesterday for a while. Looks nice, especially on a VBXE - yet, not always (I managed to glitch the cursor in one of the applications and hang another one). What I especially like is, it perfectly works with Rapidus, it is much more responsive and I noticed no other problems as mentioned earlier. So - great piece of software. Composite: VBXE: (both on the same monitor) 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 it uses C64 attribute memory for atari PM graphics (pointer and text cursor), so if an app modifies attribute memory, it screws-up the sprites. I am nevertheless totally fascinated that C64 coder did this feat, I wouldn't even know where to start 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thelen Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 Very cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8guy Posted November 14, 2022 Share Posted November 14, 2022 That's amazing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 (edited) Hello guys How does it compare to atarixle's BOSS-X? (Text on the site is in German, but an English version of BOSS-X is available) Sincerely Mathy Edited November 15, 2022 by Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 BOSS-XL is compiled Turbo Basic IIRC. This is a completely new kernel in 6502 assembly (or a kernal as Commodore people tend to call it). A new OS, with a completely new "memory map". Hence it cannot easily leverage the SIO routines in the Atari OS ROM. But if Hiassoft's routines can be assembled without Atari OS dependencies, that would be a winner. I assume they can. They only rely on Pokey and polling. No OS interrupts or anything. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 Watching this with keen interest. A decent mouse and trakball driver would be a must for me. Joystick control doesn't really lend itself to GUI's IMHO. Great work. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarixle Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 (edited) Technically, BOSS-X is a collection of similar looking Turbo-BASIC programs, while GEOS utilizes a Kernal for providing commonly needed functionality in GEOS programs. Turbo-BASIC is made especially for Atari 8 Bit Computers, GEOS is portable between 6502 platforms (well kind of, probably more portable than the original authors were thinking of). BOSS-X is written and running in BASIC, GEOS is a machine language system. GEOS was commercially successful with lots of apps while the targeted platform, especially the C64, had its commercial high-times, and was still in production. BOSS-XL/XE (1993-1999) and BOSS-X (2000-2022) were initiated when the Atari was already a historical machine. GEOS had quite usable, well working office apps. Still the C64 didn't find the way into work-offices, but private ones. BOSS-X offers just a desktop and a filemanager, a ton of File-Viewers, which have been re-invented by Apple as QuickView, and some utilities. But I never made it to create a simple plain text-editor in BASIC for BOSS-X or stand-alone. GEOS is a commercial, usually copy protected product, BOSS-X is a free hobby-project and installable w/e you want (as long it is not SpartaDOS). And it seems like GEOS is still in use and development, while BOSS-X development will stop in 2022. Edited November 15, 2022 by atarixle 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 Found the XEX versions here: https://github.com/ytmytm/geos-atari/releases Afaik, for SpartaDOS there is ATOS by Tom Hunt. And there was a compiled TB XL GUI from Poland (Dial? Tristesse? Pin?) Let's see how far he gets with GEOS. Diamond GOS was nice back in the day, but quite expensive and not very widespread. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarixle Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 That was TRS-Desk: http://www.atari8.info/trsdesktop.php Somewhere on AtariAge a semi-working AlphaRelease can be found. Means it works on an Emulator but I got it running only exactly one on real hardware. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 Another option to implement some sort of disk access could be implementing IDE support for MyIDE/SIDE/AVG cart. As far as I know there are four implementations. MyBIOS (by @mr-atari), the original U1MB firmware, @flashjazzcat's U1MB firmware and a SpartaDos X driver by the same author. None of them are open source as far as I know, but reading and writing sectors through the IDE hardware registers is not particularly hard. Best would be to limit yourself to 8-bit mode IDE, read: Compact Flash and the likes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 Is there any particular reason GEOS can't call the SIO? It would thereby gain access to PBI hard disks, FAT-hosted ATRs, etc, without any new drivers having to be written at all. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peri Noid Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 I think, it's simply not implemented yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 56 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said: Is there any particular reason GEOS can't call the SIO? It would thereby gain access to PBI hard disks, FAT-hosted ATRs, etc, without any new drivers having to be written at all. The reason is that GEOS has a completely different memory map. BUT, with wrapper routines and setting and saving the Atari OS locations, it might work. Not sure about IRQ driven SIO though. I think incorporating Hiassoft's SIO routines sans the Atari OS dependencies is easier. Just poking and polling Pokey. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted November 15, 2022 Share Posted November 15, 2022 (edited) 8 minutes ago, ivop said: The reason is that GEOS has a completely different memory map. BUT, with wrapper routines and setting and saving the Atari OS locations, it might work. Not sure about IRQ driven SIO though. The only way I could think of to perform any kind of serial IO on my GOS (aside from painfully slow IO) is to completely shut down all the custom interrupts, freeze the mouse pointer, and then call the SIO (preferably polled, as you say, but whatever the OS provides, ideally). Edited November 15, 2022 by flashjazzcat 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted November 16, 2022 Share Posted November 16, 2022 4 hours ago, flashjazzcat said: The only way I could think of to perform any kind of serial IO on my GOS (aside from painfully slow IO) is to completely shut down all the custom interrupts, freeze the mouse pointer, and then call the SIO (preferably polled, as you say, but whatever the OS provides, ideally). Dumb question - this does not hold true when loading off a PBI based HDD right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cobracon Posted November 16, 2022 Share Posted November 16, 2022 Is this hosted on any fujinet servers yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozzwald Posted November 16, 2022 Share Posted November 16, 2022 41 minutes ago, cobracon said: Is this hosted on any fujinet servers yet? I added it to fujinet.online/ATARI/GEOS 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cobracon Posted November 16, 2022 Share Posted November 16, 2022 3 minutes ago, mozzwald said: I added it to fujinet.online/ATARI/GEOS Thank you so much!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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