Posted By
MMS
on 2013-08-01
17:35:54
 |  Re: Z80 GUI: SymbOS
Litwr, you look a little depressed! 
Well, I am with 6502, but
- I was a big fan of SAM Coupe (though it has few design flaws) since I read about it in Spectrum Vilag (=World) and really impressed by the Russian ZX Spectrum clones, like Pentagon too.
- The turbo versions of the 6502 (like 65816) look pretty complex to manage, seems rather picky on RAM and the speed of supporting compontents. Also, it is backward compatible with 6502, but in 8bit mode seems rather limited, it should be switched to 16bit, if I understood well. It works in practice with C64 and in Apple IIGS, but both were
eZ80 seems to be faster, better equipped, and 8bit mode is the only one it needs. Not to mention, that for 6502 the GEOS (and maybe Contiki) are the most advanced GUIs, while SymbOS is Z80 originated, and already has MP3 and Video playback capabilities, can be well suited for the HW capabilities. SymbOS looks a much more "modern" system, than BGEOS, though no DTP or Word processors exists yet, as I see.
The RS232 Mouse to User port is an easy thing, and worked well during the short tests.
It is based on the Max232, and you can easily buy a ready TTL-RS232 converter board, you just need a User port (maybe the most expensive part of the circuitry).
PS2 and USB need much higher speed than RS232, and without a much more advanced (=more expensive) circuitry you cannot implement it on 8bit machines, as I see.
BTW in a previous post I wanted to say, that asking the GUI to be fully given with Source-Code it a request only since Linux exists.
I am not aware of any previous OS that comes with fully documented source code.
Maybe we -as users- have too high expectations?
JamesD,
The project looks pretty nice, and runs really smooth on ORIC. :-)
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