SymbOS 3.1 released

[McArti0]

DSKA100_bootable_9s2h99t_DirAmsdos14trShadow.dsk = 882kB-56kB for Amsdos.

working with Caprice Forever, not working with WinApe

FAT12 has Folder AMSDOS with 14 shading files 14 tracks AMSDOS.

Disc MAP
Track 0, Side 0, 1 sec-bootsector, 2-9sec-FAT
Track 0, Side 1, 1-9 sec - ROOT FAT Dir
Track 1, Side 0, 1-4 sec AMSDOS Dir, 5-8 sec AMSDOS space in AMSDOS.01 FAT file, 9 sec FAT space
Track 1, Side 1, 1-9 sec FAT space
Track 2, Side 0, 1-8 sec AMSDOS space in AMSDOS.02 FAT file, 9 sec FAT space
Track 2, Side 1, 1-9 sec FAT space
...
Track 14, Side 0, 1-8 sec AMSDOS space in AMSDOS.14 FAT file, 9 sec FAT space
Track 14, Side 1, 1-9 sec FAT space
...
Track 15, Side 0, 1-9 sec FAT space
Track 15, Side 1, 1-9 sec FAT space
...
Track 98, Side 0, 1-9 sec FAT space
Track 98, Side 1, 1-9 sec FAT space

[zhulien]

I was curious, but could not find any info: how does symbos compare to c64os?

Not very good

- "C64OS" (the name is very creative btw) doesn't work on an original naked machine from the 80ies but requires additional modern hardware (SD card stuff or something like this)
- its GUI is textbased only
- doesn't support (preemptive) multitasking
- is C64 only, no other platforms
- it's in a very early stage

And there are around 100 more points.

What I don't like is the ugliness of the GUI. It looks terrible blocky and clumsy. Yes, it's textmode, but if you want you can do very nice textmode GUIs for the C64, just see TEOS:

(see other videos in this channel as well)
This is so much more beautiful compared to "C64OS", and it even can do multitasking. Too bad, that 64jcl stopped working on TEOS.
Another question is, why do you need to use textmode to make a fast GUI on the C64?
On the Atari8bit you have A8GOS:

Multitasking, very beautiful Mac-like pixel-based GUI, VERY FAST, using the same CPU and same graphic capabilities (320x200x2).
And if you want to make the greatest looking GUI for the VIC2, see Clips64:
http://www.symbos.de/mirrors/www.clips64.de/pathfind.htm
Yes, the concept was for a SuperCPU, but the screen itself is just 8K, half of what the CPC has to do, so what's the problem for a C64?

I really like he idea of C64os.  I couldn't convince myself to get it though as vision basic isn't really compatible with it. Its ugly but most things on my c64 outside the demo scene are ugly.  SymBOS is light years ahead though.  Thanks for the other Atari link, I've been debating turning it into a cpm machine though as I didn't really have any other use for it.

[McArti0]

DSKA2,8MB 29s2h99tr144Dir FAT16_AMS_Symb4_Format.DSK - bootable works with GOTEK.
DSKA1,44MB bootable SymbOS4b FAT12_Format.DSK - works with WinApe.

False errors appear from time to time. This DSK has very long tracks. 18 or 29 sector and timeout appear.

I try. Interlaced soctors like Data and System format not working properly.

[Prodatron]

@McArti0, wow cool, that is very interesting, and you reached crazy results?!?
So you tried both 1,44MB HD and 2,88MB ED discs.
It's strange that they are (sometimes?) working anyway, as I thought, that HD discs require another FDC data rate/frequency due to the 18 sectors, but I didn't know that Gotek can switch to these?

Anyway, that is very cool to see, thanks a lot for all these deep tests and disc configurations!

Do you allow me to publish them on the http://symbos.org website?

[PS: As you are from Gdansk I just wonder if you sometimes visit the silly venture]

[McArti0]

Do you allow me to publish them on the http://symbos.org website?

First, test the DSK yourself because sometimes it's impossible to work smoothly even on Emulators. it very quickly claims that it is an unknown partition, and in a moment it works. You could add time there for one more disk revolution and see if the situation improves. The potential is there, but it requires some work.

I made program to create DSK in VBA Excel. I can make any org. Maybe you should suggest what kind of disk organization SymbOS will work best with. For example, I don't know what to enter in GAP3.

[McArti0]

I didn't know that Gotek can switch to these?

In Amiga floppy HD works by speed spin down. Here is somethink like this. FDC speed is the some but stuff is like virtual 8" disk with 29 sectors.

[McArti0]

if you sometimes visit the silly venture

I've never been. Thanks for the info. August 15 is a day off in Poland, so maybe I'll go.

[McArti0]

Bug. Can't MOVE file from RotDir to Folder in scenario like on DSK.

[McArti0]

@Prodatron
I recomend this DSK for public on symbos.org

DSKA1,2MB 15s2h80tr FAT12 SymbOS4b_bootable_Format.DSK (like 5,25" 1,2MB)

SymbOS 4beta with SymCALC, CP I\/i rtual Machine 2.2 (1.0) and StarCHART.
All on One DSK, working on WinAPE, GOTEK and many others, without any disk error.

SymbOS 4beta on Your CPC from one DSK

other larger DSK (2,87MB, 1,44MB) as experimental DSK

[St-BeidE(DE/GB)]

What will be the main difference(s) or improvement(s)
in Rev. 4 ?
(And isn't it time for a new thread?)

Steven

[Prodatron]

@Prodatron
I recomend this DSK for public on symbos.org

DSKA1,2MB 15s2h80tr FAT12 SymbOS4b_bootable_Format.DSK (like 5,25" 1,2MB)

SymbOS 4beta with SymCALC, CP I\/i rtual Machine 2.2 (1.0) and StarCHART.
All on One DSK, working on WinAPE, GOTEK and many others, without any disk error.

SymbOS 4beta on Your CPC from one DSK

other larger DSK (2,87MB, 1,44MB) as experimental DSK

I am still surprised! This is a disc...

...with 154KB for Amsdos, which can be read just with Amsdos without any additional ROMS, and


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...with nearly 1200KB for FAT12, which can be accessed after booting SymbOS from the same disc.

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After booting you have a full SymbOS setup with many of the applications and files.

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Very good, that you mainly choosed the new compressed ones, supported in 4.0, there is still 550KB left!

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What is really cool, is that this is not just an emulator hack, but it is working with Gotek as well. Did you try it on real hardware? I wonder if it will work in ACE as well, I will test this later today.
I really have to use this as a download option for the next full release.

Thanks a lot for this! You are probably the first who ever created such a big hybrid floppy disc for the CPC?

[McArti0]

This is a disc ...
...with 154KB for Amsdos,

In this version, only 54kB. There is shaded space for only 14 amsdos tracks. I thought it was better this way because I wouldn't take up Fat12's space.

@Prodatron on the page you can't download SymPaint. Would this application work with ver 4.0 and 3.1?

[Prodatron]

@Prodatron on the page you can't download SymPaint. Would this application work with ver 4.0 and 3.1?

SymPaint is in a very early alpha stage unfortunately. IMHO at the moment it doesn't make sense to publish it. It requires 3.1 or later.

[Prodatron]

What will be the main difference(s) or improvement(s)
in Rev. 4 ?
(And isn't it time for a new thread?)

There are a lot of things, but some of the main improvements are...
- Sound Daemon (GUI event sounds, music and sound effects for applications/games)
- compressed data support directly by the kernel, transparent on-the-fly loading of compressed data

- new GUI controls like fold-out "tree list", grid, in-line graphics for texts
- three new supported platforms (Amstrad NC100/150/200, ZX Spectrum Next, SymbOSVM)
- several new applications which require 4.0

Yes, this thread is a random collection of SymbOS stuff. Maybe I can open a new one, when the 4.0 release is coming closer. At the moment it is scheduled for the end of this year.

[PulkoMandy]

So you tried both 1,44MB HD and 2,88MB ED discs.
It's strange that they are (sometimes?) working anyway, as I thought, that HD discs require another FDC data rate/frequency due to the 18 sectors, but I didn't know that Gotek can switch to these?

It's a bit more complicated than that

On a real floppy drive, if you want to fit more sectors on the same track, you have two options: you can make the FDC run faster, or you can make the disk spin slower.

Normally, HD disks use a faster FDC (with an automatic switch between the slow and fast modes). But, for example on Amiga systems with HD drives, they used floppy drives that spin slower for HD disks (15O rotations per minutes instead of 300) and this allow to use the same controller as before. By the time the floppy has done one complete rotation, you can write 18 sectors instead of just 9.

With a real floppy drive, this requires some mechanical modifications, and you may get into trouble if the spinning speed is not fast enough. But with the gotek, this is not a problem. You can have as many sectors as you want, and the Gotek will generate the index pulse (simulating the floppy completing a turn) after it has sent them all. So it is essentially emulating a floppy that turns very slowly. The FDC has no problems handling that, but you may need to be a bit more relaxed than usual with the timeouts, as it will be some time before the sector you need will pass in front of the drive head, and the index pulse will also be slower than usual.

[McArti0]

DSK, it turned out that it has limitations, it can be described as max 29sec per track and 102 track per side. Real 2,88MB- 36sect 80tr 2side not posible in DSK. (Unless not all descriptions are needed.)
Symbos not recognized dsk with 1024 bit sectors

[Prodatron]

Symbos not recognized dsk with 1024 bit sectors

Yes, you are right, 512byte sectors size is a fixed thing in SymbOS for low level drivers, as this is more or less a standard for most mass storages since the 80ies with the exception of CDs and related. Would be a bad trade to make that part more complex, when 99% of any mass storages is working like this.
1024bit (128bytes) have been used for 1970ies 8" disc sectors, what is also the reason why records in CP/M have exactly this size.

[zhulien]

Is it hard to make symbos in cpc with more than 128k use an overacan screen resolution?

[Prodatron]

Is it hard to make symbos in cpc with more than 128k use an overacan screen resolution?

Yes impossible as the VRAM has to be in the first 64k, and on the CPC this is the most valuable area of the memory due to the limited bankswitching possibilities.
Would be possible on the Enterprise 64/128 and is already done on the PCW, as these allow to have the VRAM in the first 128k.

[zhulien]

Even the ROM version?

[Prodatron]

Even the ROM version?

There is and was never a ROM version of SymbOS. Like any modern OS since the 90ies it's fully RAM based, so it is running completely inside RAM. Beside platform independancy this allows self-modifying code, something which is used a lot in SymbOS to make code and inner-loops as fast as possible and which isn't possible in (old) ROM-based software.
The ROM is only an optional source for booting SymbOS in a fast way (like CPR, modern mass storage or just from disc)

[GUNHED]

imho one can't really tell that every OS since 199x is ROM independant...

There are some really advanced OS running in ROM, like NC100-NC200, PcW16 (Rosanne), AgonLight(2) and quite some OS more.

(On the CPC... but also in general) having an OS in ROM has clearly some advantages:
- Advanced banking is possible!

- No waste of the first 64 KB, which is needed for screen areas and other stuff which must be there.
- No waste of expanded RAM either
- The overall system stability is greatly enhanced, a ROM OS can't be crashed that easy and no 'unfinished' or 'evil' code can corrupt it
- 'Booting' in a second - it's just right there! No need to read file from disc. Even booting from IDE devices takes a long time as we can see. Like CP/M 2.2 from disc. We can see how long windows takes.... getting better when using Flash-storage instead of conventional mass-storage.

Actually modern Windows gets booted from Flash storage, which is nothing else than rewritable ROM. Even Microsoft did learn something from long booting times.

BTW: Self modifying code is nice, but providing 2nd register set for applications makes things even more quick.

Of course that's only my personal experience. And it's nice to see different attempts and different OSes doing things in a different way. Else it would be kind of boring, wouldn't it?   


EDIT: Well, I thought there was a ROM version of an older symbos version too. But I must be wrong.

[Prodatron]

- monitors usually need more time to show a picture than booting SymbOS from IDE or so; everyone has 5 seconds left when starting his CPC
- system stability depends on the code, not if it's rom or ram; rom doesn't provide a protected mode
- it's more economic, if you only need expanded ram than if you need both additional rom and expanded ram
- SSD is a R/W mass storage; just because it's not mechanical anymore doesn't turn it into a ROM
- self-modifying code vs. 2nd register usage: first one is much faster in many cases; see the Unzip project by Grauw from 2015 ( https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/software/gunzip-msx?page=0 ) which is using a code-generated huffman tree; this made it more than 100% faster than classic solutions; using additional 2nd registers made it only around 10% faster (Grauw is using 2nd registers as well, the SymShell version not, but as it made some other optimiziations, both (!) versions have the same speed, see thread)
- booting from ROM is nice and fast, no doubt; SymbOS can do both like other modern OS, but it is not dependant on a rom expansion; on the CPC a ROM-based OS can only use ROMs and nothing else
- Rosanne for the PcW16 is the slowest thing I have every seen in my life (running on a 16MHz Z80); I wonder if they used the turtle graphic from Dr.Logo for painting the GUI

[McArti0]

But if such ULIFAC was created in the 80s in the version of the same memory as extended RAM and ROM at the same time ...it would give a lot of possibilities.

[Prodatron]

But if such ULIFAC was created in the 80s in the version of the same memory as extended RAM and ROM at the same time ...it would give a lot of possibilities.

Having both is great. I love the booting speed from ROM and the flexibility of RAM