SymbOS for the Enterprise 128

[TFM]

And w/o PlayCity you can probably use interrupt 5 after frame.

[Prodatron]

Wow that would be cool. I'm going to badger Prodatron until he does this

Oh no  Using the PlayCity should exactly make this possible. Not sure were the 5. irq exactly happens, and if it would waste some CPU times while waiting for the correct position to change the colours.

[SyX]

Oh no  Using the PlayCity should exactly make this possible.

Sooooorry, but that task bar in blue, it looks sooooo pretyyyyyyy

[Trebmint]

Sooooorry, but that task bar in blue, it looks sooooo pretyyyyyyy

It does look pretty. So we need to get Prodatron to implement this for Playcity, and Richard to get implement Playcity in Winape

[Prodatron]

Today I finished one of the last important parts of the SymbOS port for the Enterprise 64/128, the SD card interface driver. Thanks a lot to Gergely and Zozosoft for this great expansion card!

SymbOS playing videos on the Enterprise 128
It was quite cool, that I neither needed to modify the videoplayer nor to convert the video files 
The TV-picture is really crap, I am still waiting for my Scart cable.

[MacDeath]

are those visual glitches usual when you use this computer with this screen ?


Anyway nice to have symbOS ported... I mean, so SymbOs applications (Apps ? how do you call them ?) can freely run on both CPC and Enterprise ?

Or do they need some sort of patches ?

[robcfg]

I'm interested in the SD card expansion. Do I need a floppy controller with that to be able to boot SymbOS? Or load disk images from the SD card?

[Ygdrazil]

Same question from here...


@MacDeath


SymbOS applications run unmodified on all platforms .....


I still have trouble understanding how graphics formats are handled though.


Is graphics eg. downrendered to eg. Joyce from a CPC or MSX? How is this accieved without a severe penalty?


/Ygdrazil

I'm interested in the SD card expansion. Do I need a floppy controller with that to be able to boot SymbOS? Or load disk images from the SD card?

[Trebmint]

Same question from here...


@MacDeath


SymbOS applications run unmodified on all platforms .....


I still have trouble understanding how graphics formats are handled though.


Is graphics eg. downrendered to eg. Joyce from a CPC or MSX? How is this accieved without a severe penalty?


/Ygdrazil

Symbos looks at each block of graphics each time it has to render them to the screen, as each has a mode attached to it. The graphics are modified and then marked with a new mode, so the next time they will be suitable without modification. The answer is there is a penalty the first time the graphics is used but afterwards there is none

[Prodatron]

@MacDeath: Most of the apps don't use platform specific code, and these all run on all platforms, it doesn't matter if CPC, MSX, PCW or EP. There are some CPC-specific apps (Snapshot loader, SF2 Rom manager), but all other ones are already running on the Enterprise without any modifications.
@Ygdrazil: Displaying 4 colour graphics in 2 colour modes (CPC Mode 2, PCW, Enterprise 640x200) is done in realtime. This is possible in quite a fast way, as the palette in SymbOS is choosen in a way, that you only need to cut the upper bit for each pixel; as you have splitted the information in two nibble you just take the one with the lower bits and copy it into the screen. The CPC and the EP have the same way of encoding the colours, so there is no need to convert anything.
On the MSX the colour encoding is different (it's done in a more logical way). Here it is like Trebmint described: Graphic data is converted automatically before it is displayed for the first time. Each graphic object has some flags, which describe the colour depth and the way of encoding. On the MSX 4 colour graphics are converted in realtime if beeing displayed in 16 colour mode, and 16 colour graphics are converted in realtime if beeing displayed in 4 colour mode. The application itself usually doesn't know anything about all this. The only problem is, if an application is modifying a graphic after it has already been displayed. In this way it has to take care about the actual type of encoding. As there are only two types ("CPC" and "logical") of encodings the amount of additional code is quite small. There is already a library for this as Trebmint mentioned.

[beaker]

Hi, I've just got my SD card for the Enterprise working. Going to get the 1MB upgrade hopefully to use Symbos properly but what's they keys to select anything? The mouse cursor seems to happily move around using the joystick but alas, it's as far as I can get.

[Prodatron]

Hi, I've just got my SD card for the Enterprise working. Going to get the 1MB upgrade hopefully to use Symbos properly but what's they keys to select anything? The mouse cursor seems to happily move around using the joystick but alas, it's as far as I can get.

The usual mouse emulation in SymbOS is the same for all systems:
Press ALT (=Copy on CPC, Graph on MSX, Alt on PCW) + cursor keys for moving the pointer and ALT + space for clicking (left mouse button). ALT + Ins on the enterprise is the right mouse key.
The Enterprise doesn't have real cursor keys, as they have been replaced by its "internal" joystick, so you use this instead. The SymbOS EP version is the first which provides an alternative mouse mode: Press the INS key to switch between cursor and mouse control. When switching to mouse control, you don't need to press the ALT key, but just use the internal joystick and press "Hold", "Stop" for left/right mouse button.
The EP together with the SD Card Interface + 1MB is really powerful btw.! Zozosoft even added 10MHz Z80 mode to my machine, which is awesome! I use the upper slot of the SD card interface for EP FAT12 software and the lower slot (micro SD) for FAT32 SymbOS data).
The best hardware thing what I did by myself was adding a powerswitch to the PSU (the Enterprise doesn't have a powerswitch ).

[beaker]

That worked perfectly, thanks 

I've emailed Saint to see what boards he has left  Do you have any details on the 10Mhz mod? That sounds interesting.  Also great idea on the mod switch. I am so used to it on my Amiga's it seems to obvious now.

[Prodatron]

That worked perfectly, thanks 

I've emailed Saint to see what boards he has left  Do you have any details on the 10Mhz mod? That sounds interesting.  Also great idea on the mod switch. I am so used to it on my Amiga's it seems to obvious now.

Saint seems to produce new memory expansion boards on a regulare base. He provides 512KB and 1024KB, but I think 1024KB is always the best choice
Regarding the 7 or 10MHz Z80 mod: I have no idea about the details, but Zozosoft is an expert here. Can you contact him via the Enterprise forum? I can also give you his email.

[Prodatron]

Hope you got a reply?
Internal memory expansion
I can also check it on the EP128 30years birthdayparty this weekend in Budapest!

[beaker]

Hi Prodatron,

I did, thanks for the kind offer  Saint hadn't got any 1MB units left so I bought a 512k one last night. I'll send my machine back to TheCorfiot next week to get that installed and EXOS 2.4 beta5 

[MacDeath]

I can also check it on the EP128 30years birthdayparty this weekend in Budapest!

EP128 30years birthdayparty this weekend in Budapest!

whot ?

[Prodatron]

whot ?

Budapest is such an impressive city btw (we just arrived here, and now looking forward to the EP party at saturday )

[MacDeath]

Hope you'll be able to post some nice report on the event.

[villain]

Budapest is such an impressive city btw (we just arrived here, and now looking forward to the EP party at saturday )

Budapest is really beautiful, you have to do some sightseeing. But from my point of view there's way too much "Orban culture" during the last years in Hungary.

[Bryce]

Budapest is really beautiful, you have to do some sightseeing. But from my point of view there's way too much "Orban culture" during the last years in Hungary.

I lived in Hungary for two years (1996/7). In Siófok, but we were up in Budapest most weekends. I was back recently and it has completely changed. The "cool" is gone and the commercial has taken over.

Bryce.

[Prodatron]

People on the Enterprise 128 birthday party.
[attach=4]

Gecos Amstrad CPC Emulator running on the Enterprise. Crazy how good this is working!
[attach=2]

Another Geco emulator: The ZX Spectrum playing Flappy Birds. It's converting Spectrum software to the Enterprise Hardware while loading on the fly by analyzing the code, which is really cool!
[attach=3]

The only none EP-system at this day: SymbOS running on the One-Chip-MSX to demonstrate network support and how it runs on other Z80 machines.
[attach=5]

Playing Spectrum software on the left and running SymbOS on the right machine. SzörG (the guy with the yellow T-Shirt) is the producer of the SD card interface, which enables the Enterprise to load nearly all existing software from FAT-based SD card within its native operating system!
[attach=6]

[Prodatron]

Two EPs playing video: The left a native one, the right within SymbOS
[attach=2]
That was a great moment for Bruce Tanner, the creator of the Enterprise Basic ("IS-Basic") and the Basic for its hungarian brother, the Videotron TVC Computer: Running both of his babies next to each other at the same time!
[attach=3]
The hungarians really know, how to make good birthday cakes! That is a 1:1 copy of a german Enterprise 128 computer! And it was really very tasty!
[attach=4]
[attach=5]
SymbOS running on the prototype of the successor of the Enterprise 128 from 1986. This included a 6Mhz Z80, 320KB RAM and an inbuilt EXDOS FDC board, but was never released, as the company went bankrupt. So this is probably one of the only existing boards ever.
[attach=6]
A close look at the EP successor prototype main board.
[attach=8]
The new "Enterpress" magazine for the 30.birthday of the EP128!
[attach=7]
Zozosofts expansion board nearly fully equipped: a "MotherX4" for the Enterprise!
[attach=9]

[Prodatron]

Bruce Tanner, the original developer of IS-Basic (right) and Povi from the hungarian EP scene (left) are celebrating the 30.Birthday of the EP128
[attach=2]

Bruce is demonstrating, that his IS-Basic supports 1024KB and more (you can store nearly any amount of programs at the same time, which can communicate and switch between each other).
[attach=3]

Bruce Tanner with his baby.
[attach=4]

[Prodatron]

The meeting was really cool! The EP scene is small but so organised and productive. Zozosoft, one of the most active 8bit guys I met during the last time, organized the meeting, and even Bruce Tanner, the member of the british Enterprise team ("Intelligent Software") of the 80ies and developer of the very powerful IS-Basic was participating as our star guest! (like Roland Perry would be for the Amstrad ) Most of the EP guys took part like Povi, Geco, the author of all the EP emulators (CPC Emulator for the Enterprise, ZX Spectrum Emulator for the Enterprise, ZX81 Emulator, VIC20 Emulator etc.), SzörG (creator of the SD card interface, which can be used directly in the EP DOS), LGB (creator of the EP JavaScript emulator) and much more - unfortunately I couldn't keep all names at this first meeting... I really enjoyed it with all these nice guys!
Oh, and Budapest is just a fantastic city!