SymbOS CPC updates and infos

[remax]

Is there an easy way to have AZERTY keyboard without remapping everything by hand ?

[Prodatron]

That was exactly the problem! I've attached the DDI clone and everything works now! Fantastic!

You may consider now checking for this posibility and letting no-FDC if you are using an M4.

That's true. You could create a SYMBOS.INI without floppy disc drives with the control panel, but currently a fresh installation can't be booted without them. I will do some changes in the FDC driver that a missing FDC won't hang it anymore.

It could even be interesting to add cassette support in the future. That could open possibilities for application converting games from DSK to cassette or for developers in general . But that's another story...

You would need an extra application for this, as SymbOS itself is completely based on blockdevices. Would be funny though to access tapes in this environment

I realized that symbos is looking/checking during booting after something on the Discs. I have a 6128 with two Floppy drives and there MUST be a Disc inside the Drive. In theres is NO disc in the drive then the booting process hangs / stops. (The symbos.ini configuration says booting from harddrive and the system Folders is also on the harddrive.)

It should continuing after a while, but it takes some seconds. I am booting at without inserted discs all the time, I just have to wait a little bit. But of course this is currently annoying. The reason for this is the direct SD card access for HxC floppy emulators, which is new in 3.0 but not 100% finished. Switching between a HFE image and direct FAT32 SD card access requires a special track seek maneuver which may take much longer than a usual one, and that's the reason why it's currently trying to access the floppy disc for such a long time.
And SymbOS always wants to have a look at the devices, when they are initialized during booting or when changing the settings. Maybe I shouldn't do that anymore for removeable devices.
Together with the modification which I have to do now for machines without FDC I will optimize this as well.

[Prodatron]

Is there an easy way to have AZERTY keyboard without remapping everything by hand ?

Good point. I always wanted to add the possibility to load and save keyboard definitions. Especially for the MSX this is very important, too, as they have tons of different keyboards. I will implement this into the control panel!

[Joseman]

And a dsk mounter, for use in symcommander, to save cpc software to the SD card!! (or ide).

Currently 99% of software is in dsk... could be a handy option!

this makes me think again in Quigs... Actually Prodatron and Edoz are doing the 100% of symbos applications...

All our needs are request to prodatron...

I think that since symbos 3.0 the number of users have incremented 10x, i think that with quigs there be more software from now on... in theory...

[remax]

I realized that symbos is looking/checking during booting after something on the Discs. I have a 6128 with two Floppy drives and there MUST be a Disc inside the Drive. In theres is NO disc in the drive then the booting process hangs / stops. (The symbos.ini configuration says booting from harddrive and the system Folders is also on the harddrive.)

For some reason, that's the contrary for me : no floppy in the 3' drive or it won't boot...

[CraigsBar]

Strange issue :/ In SymbOS you can access all folders with the expection of /SYMBOS/ itself? And it is still loading the wallpaper (it's placed in the SYMBOS folder, so at least during booting this folder seems to be accessible). Maybe you can rename/remove the /SYMBOS/NETD-M4C.EXE (network daemon) so it will not autostart it at the beginning? Maybe this is causing issues after booting. You should also check the filesystem integrity again.

OK I sorted it

the problem was simple really!!

The Partition on the SD Card was called symbos. and I guess having the partition called Symbos with a folder called Symbos confused, erm symbos!

I renamed the partition to 'Sym-M4' and all works well now.

SymIRC seems nice and stable with the M4 externally powered (RTC, X-Mem and Albireo bus powered on the Mother4x)

As soon as the newly updated Albireo mouse driver is available in the next beta release it'll be totally awesome

[Maniac]

Just got round to trying this and it's awesome! Like @CraigsBar I too had issues with my 6128+ but I didn't have a partition (or didn't think I did) but after removing the original SYMBOS.INI and renaming SYMBOS1.INI as indicated it all worked!


One quick question; would it be possible to pull the time from the M4 board? When I booted in to Symbos it just says midnight unless you set it.

[Prodatron]

Having the CPCplus, I can't help wonder if there's a cartridge version of SymbOS available. Would be awesome to have a cartridge version with the essentials, for extreme fast loading.

I am not sure if this would make sense today. Now you can load SymbOS from the M4 within about one second or from the X-MASS with Acmedos at a similiar speed, and can have all your software there on FAT formatted SD/IDE. A catridge version wouldn't be that flexible, so for people it would probably make more sense to buy an M4Board instead of a SymbOS CPC+ catridge.

[Prodatron]

@Joseman : DSK reader, maybe even with a batch option, which is proceeding hundrets of DSK files and copy them all to their auto-created subdirectories Would be a nice idea. Yes, we need more people developing in Quigs!
@CraigsBar: Thanks for your bug report regarding directory and volume ID confusion! Didn't know about this issue before, will have a look at it.
@Maniac: I was already thinking about this. My original plan was to write an own NTP client, which could be added to the autostart menu, as this can be helpful for the MSX as well. Maybe it's easier to grab the time from the M4Board.

[remax]

@Joseman : DSK reader, maybe even with a batch option, which is proceeding hundrets of DSK files and copy them all to their auto-created subdirectories Would be a nice idea. Yes, we need more people developing in Quigs!
@CraigsBar: Thanks for your bug report regarding directory and volume ID confusion! Didn't know about this issue before, will have a look at it.
@Maniac: I was already thinking about this. My original plan was to write an own NTP client, which could be added to the autostart menu, as this can be helpful for the MSX as well. Maybe it's easier to grab the time from the M4Board.

I can confirm that the time is well grabbed from a Dobbertine clone. But you have to disable the TIMEROM rom, or it will crash symbos...
But i long for using ntp/m4 board so i can free a slot in my MotherX4


Also, having both M4 Board SD card support and HXC SD Card support at the same time works well. It's great for exchanging datas between both.
Now if someone can devellop an HXC management app

[Edoz(MSX)]

this makes me think again in Quigs... Actually Prodatron and Edoz are doing the 100% of symbos applications...

Trebmint is working very hard to make Quigs public... and for sure everyone could build apps like i do when it is released. They are very simple to make thanks to trebmints IDE.

[HAL 6128]

There are examples for working with symstudio on youtube. Do. you have an example for symstudio to study which goes deeper into details than handling forms?


Yesterday my IRC on the CPC crashed two times after posting the third message.

[Trebmint]

There are examples for working with symstudio on youtube. Do. you have an example for symstudio to study which goes deeper into details than handling forms?


Yesterday my IRC on the CPC crashed two times after posting the third message.

Quigs will be released as a beta with the final release of 3.0, I promise. Its altered a lot since the Symstudio days several years back, mainly as I've used Edo to test and code for it, so its grown as he required parts to work. I will have new youtube videos up and showing how to code from first release, and quite a few tutorial projects, but I also hope that using intellitype and a very loose language structure (in that i can look Basic-ish or C-ish) that it won't really be a struggle for people to get to grips with.


Initially it will only be good for form based symbos apps, but i will be continuing next year adding console and hopefully full screen for game development.


If you have any specific questions about the language or editor I will try and answer
 

[dragon]

I am not sure if this would make sense today. Now you can load SymbOS from the M4 within about one second or from the X-MASS with Acmedos at a similiar speed, and can have all your software there on FAT formatted SD/IDE. A catridge version wouldn't be that flexible, so for people it would probably make more sense to buy an M4Board instead of a SymbOS CPC+ catridge.

Who knows, i reroute 2.1 rom loader to cartridge because i not have expansions.


On thing why symbos not suport Mode 0  with 16 colours because the resolution?.Maybe is possible add another type modes as the used in lastest  games. To show backgrounds with 16 colours?.

[Prodatron]

On thing why symbos not suport Mode 0  with 16 colours because the resolution?.Maybe is possible add another type modes as the used in lastest  games. To show backgrounds with 16 colours?.

Mode 0 support has been removed since SymbOS 2.1. The resolution is a little bit too low, so you don't have much fun with this mode. Another reason is, that it would blow up the code of the low level screen routines a lot, if the direct display of 16colour bitmaps should be supported on the CPC as well. So I don't see any chance for Mode 0 support inside the GUI.

[Prodatron]

Is there an easy way to have AZERTY keyboard without remapping everything by hand ?

Can someone give me a quick info what are the english chars for these french characters:
é
è
ç
à
ù
Unfortunately I don't have a french CPC for testing, but I checked this picture:

Two additional questions:
- do you need to press SHIFT to get 1,2,3,... - as on the picture it looks like this?!?
- the key left to the right shift seems to have three definitions @, \ and $. What do you have to press for each?

[remax]

do you need to press SHIFT to get 1,2,3,... - as on the picture it looks like this?!?

Yes ! 

Can someone give me a quick info what are the english chars for these french characters:éèçàù

What do you mean ?

- the key left to the right shift seems to have three definitions @, \ and $. What do you have to press for each?

Strange key in fact... I don't know where it's supposed to do what is written on it. CPM perhaps ?


Under AMSDOS :

Without anything -> $
With Shift -> à
With control -> ç
With Shift+Control -> Q (but i guess it comes from keyboard clash)


French Keyboard definition is weird under AMSDOS (for example : | on keyboard gives ù on screen).
I think noone would be angry if you make french keyboard display on screen the same thing that what's on the keyboard...

[Prodatron]

Thanks for the infos!

What do you mean ?
[...]
for example : | on keyboard gives ù on screen

This is exactly what I mean! 
I would like to know what ASCII values you get when pressing éèçàù.

Example:
10 a$=inkey$:if a$<>"" then print asc(a$)
20 goto 10

Maybe you could give me the results?

[remax]

Thanks for the infos!
This is exactly what I mean! 
I would like to know what ASCII values you get when pressing éèçàù.

Example:
10 a$=inkey$:if a$<>"" then print asc(a$)
20 goto 10

Maybe you could give me the results?

I'm going to bed, but i'll give you this tomorrow if noone did before

[Prodatron]

Thank you very much and good night!

[00WReX]

Hello Prodatron,

Is this what you are looking for...

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Keyboard_Versions#Character_Set_ROMs

Cheers,
Shane

[remax]

é -> 123
è -> 125
ç -> 92
à -> 64
ù -> 124

[Prodatron]

Thanks a lot for the infos @00WReX and @remax !

Attached is an updated control panel, which includes a load/save option inside the keyboard settings. Please replace the CP.EXE file in your installation with this new one.
The ZIP includes four different keyboard presets:
CPC-DK.KYB -> danish CPC keyboard
CPC-ES.KYB -> spanish CPC keyboard
CPC-FR.KYB -> french CPC keyboard
CPC-UK.KYB -> english CPC keyboard (same for german "Schneider" models)

I hope I didn't make any mistakes, but it would be nice, if someone from the french, spanish and danish guys with such a CPC keyboard could have a look at it.
Please note, that the fonts stay the english ones, so you won't see any additional international characters, but the correspondent one from the english ASCII charset, but the mapping should be correct with these presets.

[remax]

Thanks a lot for the infos @00WReX and @remax !

Attached is an updated control panel, which includes a load/save option inside the keyboard settings. Please replace the CP.EXE file in your installation with this new one.
The ZIP includes four different keyboard presets:
CPC-DK.KYB -> danish CPC keyboard
CPC-ES.KYB -> spanish CPC keyboard
CPC-FR.KYB -> french CPC keyboard
CPC-UK.KYB -> english CPC keyboard (same for german "Schneider" models)

I hope I didn't make any mistakes, but it would be nice, if someone from the french, spanish and danish guys with such a CPC keyboard could have a look at it.
Please note, that the fonts stay the english ones, so you won't see any additional international characters, but the correspondent one from the english ASCII charset, but the mapping should be correct with these presets.

Seems nearly OK (except international chars). Only problem : you should have "," on minus M instead of "`".


As a temporary fix, type "044" in Normal, then you can type a ",".


fX keys do nothing (in AMSDOS on default it gives numbers).


Attached : fixed file

[Joseman]

Thanks a lot for the infos @00WReX and @remax !

if someone from the french, spanish and danish guys with such a CPC keyboard could have a look at it.
Please note, that the fonts stay the english ones, so you won't see any additional international characters, but the correspondent one from the english ASCII charset, but the mapping should be correct with these presets.

I can confirm that this spanish definitions are wrong:

":", "+", "*"
it displays(in the test box):
"+","}","{"

but the definitions seems to be ok...