GEOS Available for Download After 18 Years

gp writes "Back in 1986, Berkeley Softworks presented GEOS, the Graphical Environment Operating System for the Commodore 64 (screenshots). GEOS effectively turned the 8-bit Commodore 64 into something very similar to a Macintosh, but for an 8th of the price. In 2004, pushed hard by rivaling C64 open source alternatives such as the Contiki operating system and desktop environment and the LUnix *nix clone, the owners of GEOS have finally decided to release GEOS to the public. Hordes of Commodore 64 users are expected to download the system." Sadly, there's no mention of GEOS for the Apple 2 series of computers, which also enjoyed this fine precursor of GUIs to come.

Comments

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

look out XP!!

Re:cool

[Ianing]

what is this 8th bit?

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the one that makes a dollar.

Re:cool

[Moocowsia]

Hmm.. I wonder if MS will try to get SCO to sue these guys too :P

Re:cool

[Hirsto]

Boots Faster Too!

Re:cool

[Saven Marek]

This is all distraction to keep people's minds off the fact there's no new AmigaOS 4 yet!.

Hurry up guys. The Amiga's little brother has caught up and gone past!

Re:cool

[Junior J. Junior III]

First they leak the source code for WIndows, now this! What's the world coming to?

Look out for a bunch of GEOS exploits as soon as some k1dd13$ get their mitts on the code. The shit is going to hit the fan, I'm telling you...

Re:cool

[StarWreck]

Noooooo! You bastards! You've slashdoted ALL of my faviorite C-64 websites into oblivion!!!

Re:cool

[sloptaco]

8-bit is the future dude!!
-sloppy

Re:cool

[emilng]

I think that's the evil bit.

Re:cool

[Simonetta]

Hordes of Commodore 64 users are expected to download the system.

Does anyone still use the Commodore 64 for anything serious? At best I would assume that it would be used as a gaming platform for people obsessed with the simple games for the Commodore that were released twenty years ago.

Or it would be used as an extended embedded system with a composite video (television) but no need for extensive disk storage.

I was one of the Commodore 64's biggest fans. But even I switched to MS-DOS and IBM PC in the late 1980's. With ten-year old 286 and 386 laptops selling for $50, why would anyone want to spend time developing and using a Commodore 64 now?

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a working Commodore 64 left in existance?

Re:cool

[screaming]

Don't be gay, bit. Don't be gay.

Re:cool

[Chris Tucker]

So Simonetta sez:

"Does anyone still use the Commodore 64 for anything serious?"

Yep, I do. I use it for address labels (printed on my 24 pin dot matrix printer) as well as for most of my letter-writting needs. In the time it takes to get the Macintosh booted and for the LaserWriter to spit out the letter, the 128 has not only been used to write the letter, spell check it and print it, it has also printed the mailing label. Of course, if it's someone I regularly send mail to, then the 128, using a different application, prints the address, return address, ZIP+4 and FIM barcodes.

I also play games on the 128, mainly in 64 mode. I lament that there is no official version of TEMPEST for the 64.

And what's this crap about "simple games"? Geeze, you know, real time ray-tracing blood sprays do not make a game better than something written 20 years ago for an 8-bit one megahertz machine.

"With ten-year old 286 and 386 laptops selling for $50, why would anyone want to spend time developing and using a Commodore 64 now?"

Gee, because it's FUN? It's easy, yet challenging? That one can bang on the silicon via an ML monitor while the program is actually running and can see the results instantly, without having to recompile the code?

There's something about an OS that doesn't actively fight you at every step that's appealing. The 64/128 is a stable platform for a lot of applications that Windows, and yes, even the Mac, would do well to imitate in simplicity, ease of use and stability.

Re:cool

[pilgrim23]

C=64? HA! a cheap hack! A mere toy! A shadow, an immitation, yes a ner-do-well wannabe system that barely measures up to the REAL 8 bit wonder of the day: Apple ][ FOREVER! So when is the II GEOS source going to be released? Oh and for any Apple II users out there looking for some help or comradeship, might I suggest checking: http://www.syndicomm.com

Re:cool

[WWWWolf]

Yeah, I sometimes still use it for stuff like word processing. I'm a firm believer in the fact that there hasn't been that many great strides in word processing technology since the early days. It saddens me when people these days buy gigahertz class computers for freaking word processing and web browsing. I mean, I can type text on C64. Several dozen kilobytes of plain unformatted text is actually quite a lot. Longer texts can be split into several files.

If I need to write one-shot D&D adventure module or something like that overnight, I don't need fancy formatting and stuff. I type it with my C64, print it with the crappy thermal matrix printer, and if I ever need to publish it, transfer it by cable to PC (or re-type it on PC) and format it there. (Actually I have one Classic D&D module that I did with this technique - original text in MiniOffice II, final formatting in OpenOffice.org. I hope to translate it to English soon, or something =)

However, the only real reason I use C64 for these tasks for is that in that place, I'd need to go downstairs for the PCs, and I'm very lazy. =)

Re:cool

[CaseyB]

Perhaps the GEOS authors decided they might as well release their code, since the leaked Windows source was all based on it anyway.

Re:cool

[Squirrel Killer]

Of course, if it's someone I regularly send mail to, then the 128, using a different application, prints the address, return address, ZIP+4 and FIM barcodes.

FIM barcode? Are you writing Reply Mail? Or did you mean the DPBC barcode?

Re:cool

[Chris Tucker]

OK, I know them as FIM, Forwarding Information Mark, the little barcode up by the postage area that tells the automated sorters that this piece has a ZIP+4 barcode.

I could be using the wrong terminology, though.

I know there are several types of this particular code, one for ZIP+4, one for Business Reply Mail, etc.

If you would be willing to elucidate, I would be glad to read what you have to say. I'm always eager to learn.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:cool

[Squirrel Killer]

Well, "Designing Letter Mail" (USPS Pub 25) defines FIM as the "Facing Identification Mark". Indeed, it is the little barcode up by the postage area, but it's not there to tell the sorters the piece has a +4. It there, as the name implies, to let the automated sorters face (orient) the piece before it runs through the automated canceler, so that the stamp gets properly canceled. There are a couple of variation of the FIM, but the Domestic Mail Manual indicates that they're all for facing mail that the machines can't find a stamp/metered postage on (ie Business Reply Mail, with the "No stamp needed yada yada yada" printed). The machines can face letters if they have a stamp or metered postage on them because the stamp and meter luminesce a little. So if you're using a stamp or postal meter, putting the FIM on is probably a waste of time and labels. The DPBC (Delivery Point Bar Code, usually right above or below the address or in the lower right of the envelope) not only tells the machines there is a +4, the DPBC actually has the +4 embedded in it (and the zip and delivery point). FYI - As of January of this year, the Post Office stopped accepting "-0000" and "-9999" as valid +4's, in case you've still got any as placeholders in your database.

Re:cool

[Chris Tucker]

Thanks for the info!

DPBC is a new one to me. Time to Google and get the specs so I can do a little more coding on the 128.

What the hell...?

[Anonymous Coward]

So somebody *did* get that leaked NT code to compile?

Re:What the hell...?

[whiteranger99x]

not only that, they must've optimized it to hell, seeing as they can run it on a C64 :D

Re:What the hell...?

[Llywelyn]

I always just *knew* that MS was trying to force us to buy hardware upgrades to run their OS...

Sounds cool

[darkjedi521]

At first I though the title said GSOS, which was the MacOS like system on the Apple IIGS, then I saw it was for Commodore. Still looks cool, now if only I had a C64 to try it out on. One of these days...

Re:Sounds cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I couldn't have said it better myself :)

Re:Sounds cool

[Dahan]

At first I though the title said GSOS, which was the MacOS like system on the Apple IIGS

Well, if you want GS/OS, you can still get it.

Re:Sounds cool

[darkjedi521]

Thanks. Now to find a Mac with a floppy drive so I can use this stuff.

Re:Sounds cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Then try an emulator, for example VICE:

http://www.viceteam.org/

Re:Sounds cool

[tsa]

Just download The Emulator (vice)!

Re:Sounds cool

[mgs1000]

You better look for a IIgs. :)

Re:Sounds cool

[darkjedi521]

According to apples page, the software is packed into a self extracting Macintosh archive (sea). So, I do need a Mac to download/extract the software and write it out to floppy.

Pushed hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there really THAT much pressure among C64 OS's?

Re:Pushed hard?

[jovlinger]

Look at geoChart: it is *excellent*! with that sort of pressure (queue Bowie) anything can happen.

Or perhaps that's just a rumor. I dunno.

Anyways, to hear the FA* tell it, C64s are all the rage in nickle and dime printshops.

Once again: I dunno.

For chrissakes, I want battery life over MHz any day of the week for my laptop, but this just seems... well... silly.

Now be quiet while I try for a high score at R-type** on my Amiga 500.

(*) rtFA, dontchano
(**) best. game. evar.

Great Timing

[Kris_J]

Anyone who's got a CatWeasel MK3 card in a Windows PC should visit Jens' site and get the skinny on Arjuna. I got it running last weekend and I've written a few C64 disks using a normal 1.2MB floppy drive. Should help get GEOS onto a real C64. Now I just need GEOS drivers and software for the RR-Net cart. Not that Contiki isn't good too, but it would be really nice if the extra RAM in the Retro Replay cart was used to improve the web browser.

Re:Great Timing

[teklob]

Anyone who's still got a C64 should really consider upgrading...

Re:Great Timing

[Neo-Rio-101]

Put a sock in it. The C64 can nowadays serve web pages, surf the internet, receive email, and do office chores. All the time without being hacked!
The OS boot time is also enviable (just switch it on)
Just how many PCs these days are invulnerable to viruses, and boot instantly?

Some people are loath to buy more expensive word processors when they have one that already works, and has been adapted to work with newer hardware (incl. ink jet printers, fast floppy and Hard drives, 16Mb memory, faster CPU, etc.). They're just a few of the reasons why people still use these things!

Oh, and did I mention the library of over 15,000 games?

Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!

Re:Great Timing

[G-funk]

Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!

Flamin' soviets...

Re:Great Timing

[Neo-Rio-101]

Oh I get it... (you were modded badly)

In Soviet Russia, you don't keep up with the Commodore... the Commodore keeps up with you!

(Homage to an old 80s Commodore marketing campaign)

Re:Great Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and did I mention the library of over 15,000 games?

But can you mention 15 good ones?

Re:Great Timing

[Negatyfus]

I've owned a Commodore 64. You can't tell me any C64 desktop is as convenient and responsive as a modern PC. Sure, it might work. But saying upgrading would give you no benefit is just plain silly C64-zealotry. Not that you directly said it.

PC's that are nigh invulnerable to viruses? Check out any OS without Windows.

Re:Great Timing

[jester42]

easy one.

Turrican

California Games

Last Ninja

Ghosts'n'Goblins

Summer Games II

Defender of the Crown

Giana Sisters

Commando

International Karate

Biggles

Gunship

Grand Prix Circuit

Blue Max

Monty on the run

Rainbow Island
There are plenty more but those were the first 15 that came to my mind...

Re:Great Timing

[Anarchofascist]

The OS boot time is also enviable (just switch it on)

Oh yes, and that brilliant idea of linking the CPU with the floppy drive over a 2400 BAUD CABLE was such a brilliant idea! I loved how it took 15 minutes to load a game.

Sheesh, and I questioned the mental integrity of Amiga fanatics...

Re:Great Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal Warrior!!! (1, 2, and 3)

covert bitops

It's free, too. (with source code, even)

Re:Great Timing

[kinnell]

invulnerable to viruses

Just because there are no viruses for the C64, doesn't mean it's invulnerable. It's just that writing a virus for a C64 would be like beating up your grandmother.

Re:Great Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

Your obsession scares me to no end.

Re:Great Timing

[golgotha007]

you forgot some of the hardcore classics!

Raid on Bungling Bay
Way of the Exploding Fist
Jumpman
Space Taxi
BC's Quest for Tires

Re:Great Timing

[shepd]

Or use star commander and hook up a real 1541 to your computer. :-)

(NOTE: Give the drive a rest every 5 or 10 disks in turbo mode or you'll burn out the 1541)

Re:Great Timing

[Ice_Balrog]

No way! IMHO The C64 has the best game library ever. Nothing can touch some of the classics that it has.

Re:Great Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

M.U.L.E. and anything made by Infocom!

Re:Great Timing

[bonkedproducer]

WHAT!? No one mentions Elite - the space trading game!?

My sadness ensues.

Re:Great Timing

[q-the-impaler]

Hell! I'd still have my C64 running if I could have found someone to work on my 1581 drive! Ended up selling it in a garage sale. I sure do miss it. The Amiga too. Everyone else can have their Xboxen and Playstations, but nothing takes me back to my childhood better than playing a C64 game.

There is still beauty in simplicity.

Re:Great Timing

[GoofyBoy]

Ever hear about this great new thing called Linux? Came from Finland, but don't let that deter you.

>Some people are loath to buy more expensive word processors

Some people are loathed to buy a word processor at any price.

>Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!

Is Lional Richie getting back with his old band?

Re:Great Timing

[StarWreck]

Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you! Flamin' soviets...

Actually, its from Australia.

Re:Great Timing

[ichimunki]

Well, I have no doubt that is true. I was just playing Jumpman (on a real C64, loaded from real floppies) the other day and the load time was serious. And my recollection is that sometimes loading software would hang! And then you'd have to start all over again.

However, booting the operating system was nearly instant as the entirety of it was burn into ROM (unlike an Apple II, I believe). Also, if you bought software on a cartridge you had a similar instantaneous boot experience. The problem was that most software was released on floppies. Like GEOS. I still have my original boxed set of GEOS books and disks. Are these things collectible, or just taking up space in my basement?

Re:Great Timing

[operagost]

I don't recall what the data rate actually was on that drive, but the real issue was a bug in the VIC-20 I/O that required the drive to be slowed down, and in the C64 it was a bug in the VIC-II chip. The way around that was to disable the VIC-II during I/O, which is what the Fastload cartridge handled automatically (wow- selling a hardware workaround to your own flawed design) and some programs (like the AD&D games) handled on their own. I think there was a way to use some unused serial lines for data and essentially turn it into a parallel interface. Incidentally, the later model disk drivers after the 1541 were much faster.

Other than the speed, these were well designed. Each drive had about as much processing power as the computer. The bus was serial, and it was a REAL bus. You could daisy chain the drives and other peripherals, addressing them by device ID. PCs didn't have this until USB appeared.

Re:Great Timing

[lacrymology.com]

My all time favorite was Pirates!

-m

Re:Great Timing

[yerfatma]

C'mon man: Bruce Lee Infiltrator I and II Jumpman Jr. Krateka and anything else that Fast Hack'em could provide.

Re:Great Timing

[mprinkey]

I lost months of my young life to Colonial Conquest. I shudder to think where I might be were it not for that game.

Re:Great Timing

[Leif_Bloomquist]

My C64 is permanently hooked up to the Internet, running a Telnetable BBS, for those who care... :)

Re:Great Timing

[DocTillo]

> The OS boot time is also enviable (just switch it on)

Sorry to spoil your fun, but GEOS comes on floppy disks for the 1541 and in a fast boot competition, i'm not sure, whether my linux desktop is faster up or the sx64 loading geos from its 1541.

There are floppy speeders, but then my pc could play its "hybernation" card ...

Re:Great Timing

[Chris Tucker]

One Word:

JiffyDOS!

FastLoad

WarpSpeed

Super SnapShot

(OK, that was two words)

There were a ton of options for the slow disk I/O.

Re:Great Timing

[gholmer]

"there are no viruses for the C64" -- nonsense. I wrote one myself; a parasitic GEOS virus that attaches itself to files of type APPLICATION.

Re:Great Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

If you could spell, you'd be dangerous.

If.

Re:Great Timing

[Anarchofascist]

However, booting the operating system was nearly instant as the entirety of it was burn into ROM (unlike an Apple II, I believe). Also, if you bought software on a cartridge you had a similar instantaneous boot experience...

If only there was a GEOS cartridge available! Was there?

Re:Great Timing

[alex_ant]

In bed with a woman?

Re:Great Timing

[everdave]

Man, Summer Games was great! I loved the cliff diving. And does anyone remember BeachHead? My C64 was fun as hell growing up, not to mention learning to "crack" a program and seeing "Summer Games - Cracked by the Daveman" or whatever on load up!

Re:Great Timing

[Anarchofascist]

Other than the speed, these were well designed. Each drive had about as much processing power as the computer. ...which sounds great on paper, until you realise we're talking 1983 here, and computer meant BIG with a BIG power supply and lots of support circuitry. The 1541 ended up larger and heavier than the C64!

So, to recap, it was slow, big, heavy, ugly, and unreliable, with a short life expectancy. Still better than tapes, and I jumped for joy when I first got one... ah memories.

Re:Great Timing

[Anarchofascist]

There were a ton of options for the slow disk I/O...

Surely that's an indication of bad original design, that there are so many easily implemented alternative solutions?

Re:Great Timing

[Chris Tucker]

At the time, the cassette tape drive and cartridges were the norm. Floppy drives were available for other hobbyist computers but they were hideously expensive. As were the computers. Remember, at the time, the Macintosh retailed for over US$2000. The C64 retailed for almost US$600, as I recall.

So, Commodore wasn't really ready fort he demand for floppy drives. Particularly floppy drives for the VIC=20! The first Commodore drive for the VIC=20 was the VIC 1540.

It later evolved into the VIC1541 and thence to the "generic" Commodore 1541 drive.

As it had to use the serial line, there were hardware considerations that came into play. And frankly, CBM felt that there really wasn't going to be a huge market for floppy drives that cost as much as the computer.

They were wrong, as sales of the C64 went stratospheric. Economies of scale came into play and the price of the computer rapidly dropped, as did the price of the drive.

So... why spend the money to improve the drive when they sold all they could make and the demand exceeded the supply?

Jack Tramiel, the owner of Commodore Business Machines was a penny pinching tightwad. If he could make the hardware cheaper to make and keep the profit margin high, so be it. But R&D was not a high priority, per se.

(Which kind of makes the C128 something of an anomaly. Designed in house, along with a superior disk drive. CBM bought the Amiga from an outside company.)

Finally, they got stuck with the design I/O of the drive as too many software companies were using the quirks of the drive (it's an intelligent device. 6502 CPU and 2K of RAM, you can actually program the drive to do whacky things!) for copy protection and software based fastload routines, there was no real incentive to mess with the design to improve disk I/O.

Also, there was a brisk third party trade in hardware I/0 speedups, so again, there was no incentive for CBM to really do anything.

So, I wouldn't say there was a bad initial design, more of just not anticipating the demand for floppy drives that would soon occur.

Now, for their "Business Machines" side of the company, they did have several models of floppy drives. One of which, the SFD-1001, if I recall the number aright, was a drive that could stash one megabyte of data on a 5.25" floppy drive. It used the IEEE 488 (?) standard and there were interface devices for the C64 and 128 that would allow the SFD to be used. These were VERY popular with folks running C64 based BBS systems.

CBM also had several 8" floppy drives for their line of CP/M machines.

Re:Great Timing

[dbingamon]

Most of these young punk virus writers wouldn't know how to make a small program in 6502. That's probably cuts out 98% of the virus writers.

Define Horde

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hordes of Commodore 64 users are expected to download the system."

Watch out, I hope their web servers will be capable of handling all 23 downloaders.

Re:Define Horde

[Shriek]

Watch out, I hope their web servers will be capable of handling all 23 downloaders.

Shhh, I don't want anyone else to know that it's actually me downloading it in 23 sections using Reget.

Re:Define Horde

[MisterFancypants]

Watch out, I hope their web servers will be capable of handling all 23 downloaders.

23 downloaders, each with 1200 baud C-1670 modems...This site will be Slashdotted for sure.

Re:Define Horde

[xoran99]

Well, hordes is a relative term... I'm sure 23 downloads puts a very harsh load on a Commodore 64 server.

Re:Define Horde

[Penguinshit]

1200?!?

You must come from the rich part of town. I had to make due with my 110 baud. I could read faster than that thing could print to the screen.

Re:Define Horde

[Endive4Ever]

My first 'online' experience was with a DecWriter I bought at a thrift store and a 300 baud acoustic coupler. I didn't have a computer at home then that had provision for a modem.

It was a true 'printing' terminal, meaning you had to eat up fanfold paper to go online with it.

I hated the BBSes with huge login messages that you couldn't abort out of.

That was a long time ago, though.

Re:Define Horde

[dtperik]

Especially if it's running on a C64. I did see someone post here that it could do that...

Re:Define Horde

[HD Webdev]

Aww comon, $1US per baud wasn't that bad!

Re:Define Horde

[benb]

I just try to imagine the eyes of the networking staff when they colocate the C64 in a rack at the ISP's data center.

Re:Define Horde

[Felinoid]

Technicality but if your 110 baud then I'd say you are both wealthy and a cheap bastard.

110 baud modems were toast long before the Vic20 came along (let alone 64) so your modem came from earlier days.. Your an early addopter.. Maybe an old Mainframe in your back yard.

Cheap becouse... dude I mean come on the VicModem wasn't that expensive.. I mean for the cost of the RS232 addapter.. Spring the extra $2 and get a 300 baud.. gezz..

And I have found

[kyknos.org]

12 Commodores in the trash can near our housee. Know I have use for them. And willing to share!

Re:And I have found

[Neo-Rio-101]

If you can, find the Schematics of the C64 on the internet and prise out the SID sound chips of those babies.

The sound chips of the C64 were revolutionary for the time, and even today are still sought after by SID music enthusiasts and other PC music junkies (for use in PC board hardware - such as HardSID), and quite frankly I would like two of them myself!

Re:And I have found

[MrBlint]

I'm suprised that nobody has emulated the SID chip in software yet.

Re:And I have found

[Carewolf]

It has be emulated in a boyband though: PRESS PLAY ON TAPE.

Check out their new CD too :)

Re:And I have found

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I don't know where you can get the chips, but when I was looking for a used projector screen at Good Will in Beaverton, OR the other day, they had two C64s for $9.99 each. Perhaps I should drive back over there and pick 'em up...

Re:And I have found

[Icekold]

They have: http://www.refx.net/pro_QuadraSID.htm?lang=eng Of course you'll need to be running a VST compatible host application such as Cubase or Logic, etc.

Re:And I have found

[MrBlint]

I'll have to add it to my collection of VST plug-ins. The more the better.

What is everyone asleep?

[jamesmp]

GEOS, Ah, Brings back memorys.. the 2 minute disk loads, the disk swapping. those were the days, bah.

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of today, booting WindowsXP on a 3Ghz machine... the 2 minute disk loads, the disk swapping bah!

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[hlygrail]

No way... not if you had a FastLoad cartridge. God bless those guys at Epyx, R.I.P. ! :) (I'm almost ashamed to admit I have 3 completely functional, entire C-64 systems, 1541 floppy drives, tape drives, and so much software it's not even funny sitting in the back of my closet... )

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[The Vulture]

GEOS worked well if you had the hardware.

My setup was a Commodore 64C, two 1541 disk drives (one 1541, and one 1541-II), and a 1764 RAM Expansion Unit (256K). I used a program called Maverick (which included a utility called geoBoot I think) that would allow me to make custom boot disks for GEOS - once the GEOS kernel initialized, Maverick would interrupt it, and dump it out to floppy, thus making a 30KB or so program to run.

Those were the days... I learned some of the GUI programming concepts that I use today in writing a Desk Accessory (a word counting program for geoWrite). I loved the environment of geoProgrammer, although using geoWrite for a source code editor was a bit painful (but, with the REU, it wasn't so bad).

Hmmm, I wonder if this would work under VICE? The GEOS fast-disk routines were very timing specific, so it might not. Maybe I'll give it a try.

-- Joe

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[Cobralisk]

What the hell was the difference between:

LOAD "*",8

and

LOAD "*",8,1

???

I just never figured that out.

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[B47h0ry'5 CuR53]

The latter usually loaded and executed the program, and the former just loaded the program into memory and you had to usually do a 'RUN' to get it to execute.

--

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[antime]

,8 means load to start of Basic RAM (0x801) while ,8,1 loads to the address stored in the file. This was used when you wanted to load machine code programs or chunks of binary data.

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[notsoclever]

Totally wrong. ,8,1 was for a binary executable (which was loaded into some dedicated chunk of address space), while ,8 was to load into the BASIC address space (basically, ,8,1 was for compiled/assembled stuff while ,8 was for BASIC stuff). ,8,1 programs usually had to be run with a SYS command, though often they'd put a BASIC stub in to do that for you. Some later game developers also figured out that they could overwrite the memory of the return-from-load handler with a stub as well.

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[WWWWolf]

Hmmm, I wonder if this would work under VICE? The GEOS fast-disk routines were very timing specific, so it might not. Maybe I'll give it a try.

VICE's drive emulation is pretty damn good. Since the site is slashdotted and I can't see a thing, I can't confirm that it works, but I'd guess so. I know that an AbaNd0nWaR3z version of GEOS 2.0 works beautifully in VICE, however. AND that it has an Y2K problem. =(

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[Anonymous Coward]

,8 was the number of device - Disc Drive in this example, and not for 0x801 addres!

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[antime]

I used a C64 daily from 1984 to about 1997-1998 so I am well aware what the device number means. However, it just so happens that the default start address of Basic RAM on a C64 is 0x800 and IIRC one byte is taken up by a special token, so Basic programs load to 0x801.

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[Mitchell Mebane]

VICE isn't cycle-accurate, so it may not work, but Hoxs64 and CCS64 are both cycle-accurate. I think CCS64 is even cycle-accurate in it's 1541 timings.

Ah, if only I could get my C64S working again...

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[Mitchell Mebane]

C64S? Oops, I meant 64C... and yes, I did preview the post...

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[A Life in Hell]

VICE isn't cycle-accurate

I beg to differ. VICE has been cycle accurate since v0.13 (current is v1.14, iirc)

Re:What is everyone asleep?

[Mitchell Mebane]

Well, my bad, then. I read somewhere that it wasn't, and I have several demos that work on Hoxs64 and CCS64 but not in VICE, so I was inclined to believe it.

GEOS Nostalgia

[spun]

I had a Commodore 64 as a kid. I remember when GEOS came out, I was so impressed. The Mac Plus gave me computer envy, but here was a windowing system I could put on my $200 computer! It was small and fast, and it came with a basic set of tools. It was also fairly easy to learn the programming interface.

Later, in the mid 90s, I met a guy who had it installed on an Intel box. I had no idea at the time that they made a 386 version. It did everything he needed, mostly writing. This was a guy who administered SCO Unix boxes for an ISP, and he used GEOS at home.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[benj_e]

I was coding on the System/38 and AS/400 when I bought my mom's old C64. My brother and I had bought GEOS for her earlier, so I started using that as well.

I used it to produce a neighborhood newsletter that I must say looked damn good. The word processing app for GEOS was really pretty good for small scale desktop publishing on the cheap.

And it was fun to write apps for with GEOBasic. The only problem was the disk overhead that GEOBasic apps had. They were *huge*. There was a little app published in Compute that crunched them down though.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[StarWreck]

My Assembly Language Professor runs the latest version of GEOS (looks like Windows 95) on a solid state laptop from Brothers.

THe entire OS and all the software fits on a flash card in the PCMCIA slot.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[drinkypoo]

There are at least a couple versions of PC Geos. New Deal Inc. used to sell "New Deal Publisher" which was PC GEOS bundled with a cute little word processor, it fit on a couple floppies and supported (the basic features of) most video cards. I believe they had a vesa driver. I have it installed on my GRiDPad 1910, the CGA driver supports the 640x400 mono mode of the 1910's LCD. Along with Palm Computing's Graffiti for the Tandy/Casio/GRiD Zoomer/Z-PDA 7000/Gridpad... I forget the grid model number. 2390? Anyway the zoomer ran GEOS, so the handwriting recognition drivers from that work on other PC GEOS, which means that my gridpad is now a big PDA.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[__aafutm5472]

I had an AST Gripad 2390, until I sold it to someone here on Slashdot. Good little PDA, did everything I needed it to. I even had, at one point in time, a terminal emulator for it, so I could hook the serial cable into my 486 Linux box and use it to display console messages.

The Gridpad/Zoomer was configured out of the box in non-windowed mode, just like today's WinCE devices, but it was possible to hack the configuration files and force it into 'Advanced mode', which would give you real windows and a desktop with icons, etc. Very cool.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[drinkypoo]

I actually had the tandy version, and now I have the 2390. I forget who I bought it from though, for all I remember it could be you :) I intend to pull the OS off of it wholesale and get it onto my 1910 instead of the PalmCONNECT software + Graffiti that I have on there now, which has been pretty shaky.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[__aafutm5472]

Heck, could've been me. I sold it about a year ago. I should really dig up the emails...

At any rate, that should be a pretty interesting project. Theoretically it should work. Then again, as someone (forget who) once said: In theory, reality and theory would be identical. In reality, they're not.

Well, hey, glad to hear that someone is still using those bitchin' PDAs.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[drinkypoo]

PalmCONNECT is essentially the same GEOS as on the 2390, and it runs on the 1910 nicely. The only differences I anticipate between the 2390 and the 1910 are volume names (the 1910 has one 20GB disk and no "floppy drives", though it does have SRAM slots, I have no cards) and the drivers. The keyboard driver will be replaced with the pen driver, the pen driver will then be replaced with graffiti, and the video driver will be the CGA mono driver. (I think that the 2390's display is also considered to be CGA mono but IIRC it's 384x512.) I think they even both use V20s.

Re:GEOS Nostalgia

[benb]

IIRC I still remember the discussion of which system was best: GeoWorks or Windows 3.x. GeoWorks had good apps delivered with it, and Windows had the mainstream popularity.

bastards...

[segment]

They leaked out the source code...

Anyway, considering no one (outside the ultra high geek) is going to be starting a c64 any time soon, it would be a nice idea if a company decided for history's sake to clone the old time machines. I'm sure there would be a market for it... Heck I know I would love to get my hands on a coleco vision adam computer again. Complete with cassettes and all.

Re:bastards...

[kg4czo]

There is a C=1 coming out sometime. It's going to have a complete C64 compatability with updated hardware plus it's own functionality. GEOS64 should run on it also. Something for that "ultra geek" in your life.... hehehehehe....

and how do I use it?

[frovingslosh]

Hordes of Commodore 64 users are expected to download the system."

Great, I can download GEOS. Now how do I get it on a single sided, strangely formated, low density floppy so that I can actually run it on my C64?

Re:and how do I use it?

[Kris_J]

You can build a PC interface for an old C64 drive or you can, as I have, buy a Catweasel MK3 and install it and a 1.2MB floppy drive into a PC (or Amiga).

(Or if you've got an RR-Net cart and you're lucky enough to have the Web Downloader working, you can setup a local web server on your PC and transfer a .D64 disk image onto a disk that way.)

Re:and how do I use it?

[freeweed]

Here's a start:

http://sta.c64.org/xcables.html.

Note: I tried making a cable to run off my PC's parallel port a couple of years ago, and it never worked. It's not as simple as it looks.

For those too lazy to read, it boils down to this: You cannot read or write a disk formatted for a Commodore drive on a PC, and the same is true for a PC-formatted disk in a Commodore drive. They use entirely different formats to write to the disk, it's not just a matter of a different filesystem. The above link allows one (in theory) to build a parallel1541 (one of the most common Commodore disk drives) interface, and some PC software to handle the data transfer.

Either way, this is still pretty neat if just for (legit) emulator use. I remember GEOS when it first came out, and as annoying as it was, I saw pretty quick that this was the future for all home computing. It took me until the early 90s before I saw anything like this on the PC (Macs have always been too pricey for my tastes).

Re:and how do I use it?

[jayzee]

I'll be needing a WAV file for the tape drive version (Though I don't think there was one) ... my 1541 gave up years ago ....

Re:and how do I use it?

[kyknos.org]

and why do you not download it to the commodore directly from th net?

Re:and how do I use it?

[frovingslosh]

Yea, the hard drives were really awful. Used to beat themselves to death against a track zero stop rather than just sense when the drive was at thack zero, all would go out of alignment in short order. Mush more useful than a cable that would let you hook up an old 1541 to a PC would be a program that let a PC store everything on it's hard drive and serve files to the C64 over the serial cable protocol. Of course, they would have to emulate a lot of the 1541 subroutines too, and give you ways to run the fancy loaders some software installed in the drive to speed up a drive that could take several minutes to load a program into a computer with only 64k of memory (as well as to deal with much of the awful "copy protection" many of the orginal disks have).

Re:and how do I use it?

[Penguinshit]

Don't forget to use a hole-punch on the edge of the disk so you can use BOTH sides...

Re:and how do I use it?

[SmokeSerpent]

The only reason they ever "beat themselves to death" knocking over to track zero was because of the "awful copy protection" schemes and "fancy loaders". If used as designed, the 1541 didn't knock all that much. So, yes they did go out of alignment sometimes, but it wasn't so much due to bad design, as due to abuse. I did use two 1541s heavily for about 10 years (fancy loaders, copy "protection", nibblers, and all) without an alignment problem though.

Re:and how do I use it?

[hson]

Well actually you can read PC floppies on the Commodore drives (atleast with 1571, 1581, CMD FD-2000 and FD-4000), using software like Big Blue reader and Little Red Reader.

Re:and how do I use it?

[cachorro]

I vaguely recall having used a modem to dial into campus from my C64 in '84. Xmodem or one of its descendents would happily download your GEOS data (300 baud or higher).

I assume you haven't misplaced your C64 modem. :)

Re:and how do I use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can try this or try this.

Re:and how do I use it?

[WWWWolf]

Punched? PUNCHED? You had hole-puncher for that? Rich kids' toys...

I always use scissors and I have never, ever screwed it up, despite of the rumors that it's dangerous to do that with scissors...

Re:and how do I use it?

[Graemee]

I used a small USR program that modified the drive routine that handled the error. Instead of going to track 0, thus head banging, it moved the head to track 18 the directory track. No knocking. It was a oneline program copied from a letters section of a 64 magazine. Worth finding again.

Re:and how do I use it?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Bah. Diskettes. Sheer luxury. We used cassette tapes, and we were glad to have 'em, too!.

We used to turn the volume up and sing along with the streaming bits out of gratitude that we were allowed to LOAD software on our computers...

Re:and how do I use it?

[WWWWolf]

We used cassette tapes, and we were glad to have 'em, too!

Hmmmm, I think I could just dream a thing far more sinister and evil than the C64 port of Street Fighter II... a tape drive version of GEOS. The original implementors of GEOS made it work pretty damn well on the slow disk drive, but it'd have been "interesting" to see how they would have handled it if the bosses had told them to make the thing support a tape drive... Click on geoPaint icon and see "Insert geoPaint tape side 1, rewind, and press play to load"... *shiver*

I do have a word processor that came on a tape though. Just not a GEOS version. (I backed it up on a floppy with TFC3 though, that way it loaded more than a bit faster... =)

Re:and how do I use it?

[Captain Rotundo]

I actually have a DiskDoubler sitting on my desk at work. never fails to strike up a conversation!

Re:and how do I use it?

[Captain Rotundo]

I should add that it actaully came in handy once recently (not that a razor couldn't have done the same thing)

We had a customer with an ancient system that the company sold him years ago, the 5 1/4 disk his software was on failed and we sent him a new one.

Re:and how do I use it?

[Penguinshit]

I had a Commodore PET that used a tape drive. And I never labled the tapes. It was very frustrating to LOAD a game, go out for a snack, and come back 45 minutes laters only to find the game wasn't on that tape...

Re:and how do I use it?

[FrankBlues]

My 1541 did beat it self out of alignment every once in a while... I had this little basic program dubbed "reverse knocker" that actually beat the head thirty or forty times in the opposite direction, and the drive would work like a charm afterwards.

Wow that brings back memories...

TACKTACKTACKTACK GRIND GRIND blinking red light blinking red light

Re:and how do I use it?

[Felinoid]

Yea, the hard drives were really awful.
Hard drives?
Do you mean: 1581 floppy drive? The small disks were often called "hard disks" by people who didn't know what a hard disk was.
The 1581 was designed based on the 1571 who had fixed the whole drive knocking problem.

Do you mean the vareous hard disks available for the Commodore 8 bits? As the Commodore computers didn't have an actual drive interface but more of a "slave computer" IO buss the hard disks were usually stock hard disks inserted in a costume drive system. If they had a knocking problem it wasn't a commodore issue byond maybe copying the 1541.

Do you mean then 1541 and 1540? Those drives would slam dance themselfs when an error happend as a lazy way of trying to correctly determine where the drive head really was. (assuming a software fault).
The stupid copy protection systems on the Commodore would intoduce thies errors on the disk causing a lot of drive knocking.

A local computer shop reduced the knocking by adding a rubber stopper into the disk drive.

Some people believe Commodore intended the disk drives to come out of allignment every now an then to make it valuable to be a Atherised Commodre service shop. No doupt they didn't intend for it to get as bad as it did with the copyprotection.

Re:and how do I use it?

[bwy]

I had an nice little app called "Drive Music" that played a nice melody through the 1541. That wouldn't constitute abuse, would it?

Re:and how do I use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cassette Tapes?
Hell, we bought computer magazines with programs print in 'em (Compute Gazette? Power Play?) and typed in our programs over hours, hoping for no typos. Then once we could get them to run, we left the C64 on for hours, sometimes days, because as soon as we turned it off there went hours of typing.

Re:and how do I use it?

[Paul Slocum]

I built one of those cables and managed to get it to work. The trick was that I had to try a LOT of different versions of the Star Commander software before I found one that worked. I use it on a Pentium I.

The main reason I did it was to transfer my very first BASIC and assembly programs to my PC for backup.

-paul

Re:and how do I use it?

[Stormin]

Yes, that was a big deal with the 1571 when it first came out. I never thought much of it, until years later when I got my first PC as hand-me-down. I bought a modem, but had no software for it. It seemed quite lame to sign up for something like AOL (if it even existed at that point, most of my friends had Prodigy) just to download real terminal software. I ended up downloading it on the Commodore and writing it to a PC disk with the 1571.

GEOS for DOS

[m00nun1t]

I'm sure in my early DOS days (DOS 2.11 on an 8086) I had a trial copy of a windowing system which from my vague memory was called GEO. Is this the same company? Odd there is no mention of it. Am I making this up?

Re:GEOS for DOS

[phatsharpie]

It might be GEOS or GEM, I always get them mixed up. There were quite a few windowing environments around back then.

-B

Re:GEOS for DOS

[CaptainFlyingToaster]

You're thinking of Geoworks Ensemble. It came bundled with a number of Magnavox 8086 through 80386 machines back in the late 80's / early 90's. It did everything windows 3.1 did, except: 1. Crash every 30-60 seconds 2. Run more than the 30 or so apps that came with the distro. Still, a good, solid windowing system for low-end hardware.

The GeoWorks of old can be found at Home Of the Underdogs. A newer incarnation, updated for newer hardware and the Web is called Breadbox Ensemble, and is viewable here: http://www.breadbox.com/ensemble/geocats.asp?categ ory=Ease-of-Use

Re:GEOS for DOS

[TClevenger]

Geoworks Ensemble was awesome. Faster on my 286 than Windows was on a 386, superb quality printing, WYSIWYG and scalable fonts before TrueType was available to the masses, and some killer apps. They promised an SDK, but kept delaying until Windows for Workgroups came out, essentially killing off Geoworks.

Re:Hordes?

[DrJonesAC2]

Nope, 4 including me (runs to attic to dust off old C64...)

GEOS is still around.

[Slack3r78]

Believe it or not, the GEOS codebase is still alive and kicking. I haven't gotten around to trying it personally, but it's supposedly updated for modern hardware and is capable of browsing the web. Breadbox, the company that apparently owns the code now is marketing it as a low-cost alternative to Windows for schools that could be run on older hardware. Interesting in the least.

Re:GEOS is still around.

[Slack3r78]

Sorry, I messed up the link in that post. The link is http://www.breadbox.com/

Re:GEOS is still around.

[edwdig]

I dunno if I'd say it's alive and kicking. More like on life support.

The extent of its being "updated for modern hardware" is the kernel will save the full 32 bits of the CPU registers on a task switch. It's still running in real mode with 640k limits.

Breadbox has had the rights for almost 3 years now. They haven't really done anything significant in that time. Most of what they've done is minor bugfixes and finishing up the half finished apps that were sitting in the source tree.

VIC 20

[vchoy]

I have an old VIC 20. Will piece of software still work with it?

Re:VIC 20

[frovingslosh]

The VIC20 had much less memory, different hardware, and a different ROM. GEOS will not run on it.

Re:VIC 20

[QueenOfSwords]

Unlikely... GEOS needed the 64's HiRes routines and memory. It was also one of the few Commodore programs to benefit from a C128's extra memory.

I want to know if I can get it going via an emulator on my iBook. We gave our C64s away years ago :( .

Re:VIC 20

[StarWreck]

There's talk about being able to use a Vic-20 as a WAP-Browser (text-only webpages designed for Cell-phones).

Don't laugh

[superpulpsicle]

Cause Doom III won't be out in 18 years either.

Re:Don't laugh

[dtfinch]

Don't forget Duke Nukem Forever.

Funny you should mention it....

[Anonymous Coward]

...considering no one (outside the ultra high geek) is going to be starting a c64 any time soon.

That's exactly what i was planning on doing after I finish smoking this bowl.

Re:Funny you should mention it....

[Cobralisk]

You bastard! Not only do I have empty pipes, but my C64s no longer boot! Probably a power supply issue though, Guess I'm going to radio shack after work tomorrow.

Ahh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The screenshot reminds me of my old Atari ST in a way. Minus the green desktop of course.

Re:Ahh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The screenshot I saw looks a bit more functional than I remember the GEM ui being, but yeah... speaking of the ST, it looks like the little green desktop has moved to http://www.atari.st/

interesting stuff

[highwaytohell]

This looks like it could have actually gone pretty far had it had a chance. As a cheap alternative to an apple it looks like it had some good functionality. Does anyone know what the reliability of this OS was like. It says that it provided some decent support for 286/386. Its a shame that this wasnt given the support that it deserved. WHo knows what it could have been capable of. I suppose most people rejhected it as the C64 was mainly for gaming, at least when i was a kid it was. If i had known it was around, and i had more interest in OS', this probably would have ended up in my living room. Its been a while, but its still good to see what some of the pioneers were capable of.

Re:interesting stuff

[GrouchoMarx]

You're thinking of two different products. What has been released, as I understand it, is the source code for GEOS 1.0 for the C64. Awesome little machine, with an even more awesome GUI that ran off of floppies. (Back in my day we didn't have hard drives, and we liked it!) Very powerful, very stable, especially when you consider it had a whole 64 KILObytes of RAM and ONE Megahertz to play with. They had a trash can concept long before Apple even thought of it.

You're thinking of GeoWorks Ensemble, based on the GEOS 2.0 kernel, which ran on the PC. It was a contemporary of Windows 3.0, and every review at the time said that it wiped the floor with Microsoft's baby. Of course, the company had zero marketing skill while Microsoft, well, we know their marketing strategy. So Windows won and GEOS, which I still consider to be one of the best idiot-friendly interfaces ever created, eventually petered out.

It's last gasp was on the Casio Z-7000 Zoomer handhelds. They were released right after the original Apple Newton (the Newton beat them by about 3 months), and wasa joint coventure between Casio (hardware), GeoWorks (OS), and a little startup company run by Jeff Hawkins and Dona Dubinsky called "Palm Computing". While the Z-7000 was a market flop, along with the original Newton, it was from the mistakes there that Hawkins and company learned how to make a handheld the right way, and so was born the Palm Pilot.

There was also an attempt at a GEOS 3.0-based handheld, or more accurately a "tablet PC", called the Sharp PT-9000. It ran all of the same apps as the desktop GeoWorks and used the exact same data file format, and used a very tablet PC-esque form factor and design as far back as 1995-1996. Unfortunately, Sharp for unknown reasons killed the project at the last minute, and it was never produced outside of beta units within the company itself. Once again, GEOS beat Microsoft to the punch, by nearly a decade this time, but it just didn't work out for whatever reason.

(I have a used Z-7000 I bought off eBay for nostalgia, but never did get my hands on a PT-9000.)

Except for really hard core hackers with old C64s, this is not really major news. Still, it's a nice trip down memory lane.

Re:interesting stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

What has been released, as I understand it, is the source code for GEOS 1.0 for the C64. Awesome little machine, with an even more awesome GUI that ran off of floppies. (Back in my day we didn't have hard drives, and we liked it!) Very powerful, very stable, especially when you consider it had a whole 64 KILObytes of RAM and ONE Megahertz to play with. They had a trash can concept long before Apple even thought of it.

Whoa, lay off the crack pipe a bit.

Apple had a trash can on the Macintosh since System 1.0, in 1984. GEOS 1.0 wasn't introduced until January, 1986.

Re:interesting stuff

[waynetv]

You're forgetting the HP OmniGo line of organizers. Both the 100 and 120 ran GEOS. It also had Palm graffiti software. And it came out just before the first palm pilot.

It was a great little device with a keyboard and fold-around screen.

Re:interesting stuff

[antime]

Nowadays GEOS is used in Nokia's 9000-series "Communicator" smartphones.

Re:interesting stuff

[edwdig]

The PT-9000 was developed around 94, as it shared the same SDK as the Zoomer.

There was also the Nokia 9000 smartphone released in 96 or so. It was a ~$900 cellphone that opened up to reveal a screen and keyboard. It was pretty much a phone with a 386 in the same case. Supposedly it sold really well to business people - enough to prompt a second version of it, the 9110. Eventually Nokia created Symbian. I don't really know what prompted Nokia to start Symbian, considering they already had a fairly successful smartphone.

Re:interesting stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a trash can concept long before Apple even thought of it.

GEOS: 1986
Apple Macintosh: 1984 (trash can from day one)
Apple Lisa: 1983 (okay, so it was called WasteBasket)

In what crazy universe does that qualify as "long before Apple even thought of it"?

Re:interesting stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

You write as if the Nokia Communicator was discontinued or something. Not so -- they've kept developing new models, it still sells fairly well, and I'm sure any well-stocked mobile dealer would have some for sale. Based on what I've personally seen, I'd say that the Nokia Communicator is the most popular PDA in Finland. And to keep this on-topic, there is a C64 emulator for the Nokia Communicator.

Re:interesting stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because the Nokia 9110 software sucked. It would self-destruct kinda like windows, just in less time, and with more fatal results. When mine was worst, I tried to use the telnet app to check a server, and about the time I got the login-prompt (after 30 secs of connecting, this is GSM modem), it would reboot. Try again, dial, wait 30 seconds, connected, login:, reboot.

There was an undodumented key combo to "format" the phone, resetting everything to factory settings. But as soon as the backup of contacts (phone numbers) and such was restored, it would be in bad condition again.

Re:interesting stuff

[squiggleslash]

Nokia switched to Symbian's EPOC, they didn't start Symbian; Symbian was originally a branch of Psion.

I had a 9000. Loved it; I have a 9290 now, and can see why they switched, it's a much more powerful, elegant, system.

Re:interesting stuff

[edwdig]

The first two Communicators ran GEOS. The new ones don't. They're totally different products but happen to share the same name.

Re:interesting stuff

[anti-trojan]

And to keep this on-topic, there is a C64 emulator for the Nokia Communicator.

And can it run GEOS?

Re:interesting stuff

[TClevenger]

It was a contemporary of Windows 3.0, and every review at the time said that it wiped the floor with Microsoft's baby. Of course, the company had zero marketing skill while Microsoft, well, we know their marketing strategy. So Windows won and GEOS, which I still consider to be one of the best idiot-friendly interfaces ever created, eventually petered out.

What killed them off was that they kept delaying the SDK. They actually had a comfortable installed base for a while, but when Windows came out with WFW 3.11, with its networking and TrueType, Geoworks hadn't moved forward for a year.

Geoworks?

[tekrat]

Whatever happened to GeoWorks Ensemble, the version of GEOS that ran on low-end intel/amd boxes? Once upon a time you could load that onto a 386 and it would make a Pentium-based Windows machine look like it was standing still.

I'm looking for Geoworks to throw onto some 486's I want to bring back to life -- the last version I remember had a web-browser and everything!

Re:Geoworks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already posted on this (hence the anonymous, don't want to karma whore), but check out www.breadbox.com. They've put together an updated version of GEOS complete with Internet support. HTH. :)

Re:Geoworks?

[istewart]

I don't know anywhere that it can be downloaded, but GeoWorks came with a couple of refurbished 486s my school had around 6th grade... This is part of the reason I rescued them when the school decided to get rid of them a year ago. It's really a great little system, it even has an AOL client of all things. If it can still be found someplace, then I think it certainly makes a superior environment to the ubiquitous DOSSHELL, and Win3.1's only advantage is application compatibility.

Not that anyone is still going to be using 486s with DOS for serious work. I hope.

Re:Geoworks?

[ComputatusMaximus]

I had GeoWorks Ensemble on my first 386 and GEOS on my C64. I remember the first time I saw Windows 3.1 and thinking, what a crappy GeoWorks knockoff...

Re:Geoworks?

[Brandybuck]

I used it for quite a while. I even ran it on an 8086, even though the specs said I couldn't. Even as late as 1998 I was using it in a shop I worked at on some old 386's, for basic office productivity stuff. At $79 it was a heck of a lot cheaper than a new system plus Windows.

For a while it was going head to head with Windows, and doing well. Even preinstalled on some systems. What ultimately killed it was the lack of a good SDK. No one developed for it, so the only apps available were pretty much what came with it.

I heard a few years ago that it was still being sold under the name "New Deal Office", by New Deal, Inc. It was targetting churches and schools, and anyone else who had donations of old computers that couldn't run Windows.

Re:Geoworks?

[david.given]

I developed for it. It was... a pig.

It had it's own OO system that didn't match any programming language out there, so it had its own called GOC. This was implemented as a nasty preprocessor that spat out C, which you compiled with Borland C++ and linked using Geoworks' own buggy linker.

While the pure C API was pretty nice, in order to actually do anything you needed to use GOC objects, and the syntax was bizarre. I won't go into any details here, but all my old source code is available off the 'net.

Once you got past the weirdness, it was amazingly rich, however. Object oriented, fully multithreaded and preempted, bitmap and vector graphics including scaled, rotatable vector fonts, virtual memory (yes, even on the 8086!) But it was just too much effort to do.

My GEOS swan song was a Unix emulation system. It allowed you to use Minix-style split I/D executables in a Unix syscall interface environment inside a virtual terminal. It was amazingly powerful, worked well, and would have allowed you to actually develop for GEOS inside GEOS, once I'd actually finished it.

No-one was interested.

Re:Geoworks?

[Felinoid]

I can see why the Geoworks SDK was so bad.
Firstly Geoworks or GEOS/PC was based on Geos 64 however Geos 64 (unlike Windows) was not intended to be an operating system but an applications pacage. So originally Geos 64 was designed to have the apps develuped internally at Berkly this would most likely be passed over to Geoworks unless it was a white paper rewrite.

Geoworks was a very populare product with a problem. The market had already gone to Windows. While it made no sense at the time Microsoft had already gainned market domination.

Also Geoworks didn't have an SDK before version 2.0. As a result Geoworks had to rush the SDK develupment before Microsoft got market domination.

Geoworks also made the intresting choice of liccensing the MOTIF GUI. I always wondered if the infamous MOTIF API was found in Geoworks.. The problems you faced with it suggest the answer is yes.

Even with rushing the SDK to the market Geoworks was good and dead on the PC long before the Geoworks SDK was ready. The SDK remained for the Zoomer, Geobook and early smart cell phones.

But the Geoworks GUI was very nice. link Thanks to Toastytech for documenting the old Geoworks UI.

Ahh but Geoworks got a new life with "Newdeal" but they appear to be missing now.

A new reincarnation of Geoworks is Breadbox makes Breadbox Ensemble for sale and for trial you can use Ensemble lite. (Downloadable from Breadboxes website).

Breadbox has supported Geoworks back in the days of the Zoomer.

In my opinion the Geoworks SDK was a pig becouse Geoworks was doomed not the other way around.

Re:Geoworks?

[david.given]

Geoworks was a very populare product with a problem. The market had already gone to Windows. While it made no sense at the time Microsoft had already gainned market domination.

Actually, Geoworks competed head-to-head with Microsoft for a time. Geos came out at about the same time as Windows 2, and beat the hell out of it: it was so much better it wasn't funny. Unfortunately, Geoworks had marketing people so bad that even Acorn didn't want 'em...

Geoworks also made the intresting choice of liccensing the MOTIF GUI. I always wondered if the infamous MOTIF API was found in Geoworks.. The problems you faced with it suggest the answer is yes.

No, it was quite different. You built your user interface by using special GOC constructs to declare objects in your application file. The GEOS linker would then create those objects when the application was loaded. You very rarely had to actually create things on-the-fly. The Motif-ness was strictly limited to the look and feel of the system, and had nothing to do with the internal implementation. Check out my source code; it's, uh, horrific.

New Deal Office had a different UI module: Screenshots here. Windows lookalike, of course.

Re:Geoworks?

[NaturePhotog]

PC-GEOS didn't share anything in common with Commodore GEOS 64 / 128 or Apple GEOS except the name GEOS and the fact some of the same engineers worked on all of them. I did some work on Apple GEOS applications, and was part of the team that wrote PC-GEOS and its applications.

Microsoft hadn't yet dominated the desktop market when PC-GEOS came out. But pressure from Microsoft on OEMs (e.g., if you're going to bundle DOS, you have to pay for Windows even if you're not going to include it), plus bad marketing by Geoworks, and lack of an SDK in time doomed it for that market.

PC-GEOS was written from scratch. It used a generic UI, which was built out into a specific UI at runtime. Generic objects could build out into a single specific object (e.g., a button), an entire menu tree (e.g., all of the common File, Edit, View menus), or anything in between. This was the basis of one of Geoworks' patents. It made it very easy to get the basic functionality of an application up and running quickly. It also had an amazingly powerful text object, that was basically a word processor.

Because the generic to specific buildout happened at run time, these could be a lot more than superficial 'skins'. Unless you were designing for a handheld or other small device, no changes were required in the applications themselves to run under any of the UIs.

The first released UI was based on the Motif look-and-feel, but didn't use any Motif API. The original specific UI was based on OpenLook, but for a variety of reasons that wasn't used. There was also a CUA UI (think OS/2, much like Windows 3.0), a variety of OEM-specific UIs, a Deskmate UI for demo to Tandy Corp., and even a Macintosh UI for demo to Apple and Claris. NewDeal later added a "industry standard UI" (Win95 look-and-feel), and Breadbox a similar ISUI (Wind2000 look-and-feel).

Geoworks is now a corporate shell based in Texas. NewDeal is completely defunct. Breadbox currently owns the rights to PC-GEOS, and is alive and well. GEOS freeware, shareware, etc. live on at Tva Katter. (I maintain the TK site. There should be a ring over the 'a' in tva, but /. keeps eating it. The name is Swedish for 'two cats')

early AOL?

[monkeyboy87]

IIRC, primordial AOL ran on GEOS for Intel...

Wraptor

[frovingslosh]

I do see on the GEOS site they have a Wraptor program that they claim is the first step - but they give you no way to get Wraptor to a real C64 either. They seem to think you are only going to run this stiff on a c64 emulator, not a real C64.

Same company, different codebase...

[William Tanksley]

Berkley Softworks developed C64-Geos, which was also ported to the Apple and such, and then all through the 80s worked on their next accomplishment: Geos for the PC.

When released, it was the first commercial object oriented OS for the PC (NeXTStep was earlier, but Geos beat it to the PC).

And honestly, it kicked BUTT, because not only was it fast and elegant, it had a KILLER application suite and awesome dot matrix printer driver. Near laser quality from a mere 24-pin and my old '286... And it ran as a DOS application, too, with special drivers to make it cooperate with DR-DOS' task switcher.

I miss it now.

-Billy

Re:Same company, different codebase...

[Lumpy]

I have a copy of GEOS for the pc it came with their Desktop Publishing program for free.

we ran it in the business for making advertising flyers and several of the people liked the GEOS interface and always wondered " why is ther no other software for this geos thing?"

when windows came along, I though it was a cheap copy (windows 2.0 Sucked horribly... and yes i probably have a copy of that floating around) of GEOS.

GEOS for the PC rocked.

lemme see if i remember...

[joeseph schmo]

LOAD "GEOS",8,1

POKE "SCO","SHARP STICK"

ahhh yes...

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[chickenrob]

What was that ,8,1 all about anyways? I remember you had to type it to load certain programs but I never knew the reason.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[whiteranger99x]

here it goes...

if i recall correctly, the ",8" had to do with the device number (disk drives were typically 8, but i believe 9,10, and 11 could be addressed for additional disk drives as well.)

as for the ",1", i believe that loaded the program in machine language...or not, i forget :P

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[tao]

The first number is the device (8 being the default setting for the first disk-drive, unless you altered the dip-switches), the second telling that the program shouldn't be reallocated on load, but rather loaded at the start-address it had when saved.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[The Vulture]

You're correct on the ",8" part.

As for the ",1", well, it went like this. The first two bytes of every standard file that was designed to be loaded using kernel routines (whether it be from the BASIC LOAD command, or through the actual kernel routines) were the load address. Most basic programs were loaded into memory at $0801, so those two bytes (actually $01, $08) were at the beginning. If it was assembly code that loaded into memory at $C000, then the first two bytes were $00, $C0.

Anyway, to make a long story short, that ",1" told the load routines to load the file into the memory space pointed to by those first two bytes. Otherwise, they would be ignored, and the program would be loaded into memory at the start of BASIC memory (by default, $0801, but I think memory locations 43 and 44 changed that).

-- Joe

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[CoolVibe]

the "8" meant device 8 which was usually the c64 1541 disk drive, and the "1" was used for autoloading programs (so you didn't have to type "RUN")

But this is all sooo long ago, I could be off about the "1" part.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[whiteranger99x]

Excellent...

yep, i knew i wasn't going to get 2 for 2 correct. =)

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[The Vulture]

Actually, the autoloading was usually done by machine language programs. The typical way to do it would be to write a small stub program in machine language that loaded into memory space near the I/O vectors (the cassette buffer and a small little area at $02A7 were favorites). As part of that program you would actually save a copy of the vectors, and set the load address of your executable to be that of the vectors.

When your program loaded, you overwrote the vectors, and one of them controlled where program execution went after a load.

It's been a long time since I've done that, so the exact details in my mind are hazy. But that's how some of the simple autoloaders were done.

-- Joe

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[raynet]

IIRC the ,8 meant device id 8 which was default for first floppy (4 drives could be chained) and ,1 for non-basic programs, probably for binary-safe loading..

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are actually many methods for autoloaders, overwriting different locations in the lower four pages of memory.

The method of choice I always used was to stick a small loader program in the 679-767 space that was completely unused by the system. It's large enough for a very simple bootloader. The location that I overwrote was almost immediately following, at 770-771, which was the vector for the main BASIC program loop. This is, in other words, the shell. If necessary, a small amount of code can be stored from 772-787 without overwriting anything of use. ALso, 768 and 769 can be overwritten. It's not a lot of space, but it's enough to stick a very simple autoloader. I prefer this method because it doesn't involve overwriting any Kernal vectors and what not.

The problem I always worried about with overwriting the cassette buffer is it involves overwriting a LOT of vectors that are used by the Kernal. Commodore promised that the locations of the jump table would remain the same, but the actual addresses of routines within the Kernal could change if necessary. As such, overwriting vectors to Kernal routines seems dangerous, especially because loading is done with the interrupt turned on.

Other hacks existed as well, such as overwriting the keyboard buffer to include a RUN and return.

There were other methods as well, but these are just the ones that come to mind.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC you are correct, and this mechanism was popular for "autorun" copy protection. The adresses below $0400 contained things like the keyboard buffer and the processor stack (the latter between $0100 and $01FF).
The program would be loaded at an adress designed to overwrite these memory area and, for instance, the RTS assembler command at the end of the load routine would get a fake return address from the stack. That address would point to the entry routine of the program. The program could then lock down the computer completely, thereby keeping the user from saving the program.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[Reteo Varala]

It was as follows:

LOAD [PROGRAMNAME],[Drive #],[Binary code?]

Program name is obvious.
Drive number; on the C64, there were four designations for drive numbers, 8, 9, 10, and 11. The first disk drive was 8, and since it was the most likely to exist (especially for people like me who had only one drive), it's pretty much habit for that one.

In the Commodore, the last number indicated whether a loading program was a binary one, or one written in the commodore's BASIC interpreter. If left out, the operating system assumed it was BASIC, while putting "1" there would ensure that the OS didn't try to substitute values for BASIC commands.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[ragnar]

I'm in awe. I thought I was a hard core geek back in the days of using my C=64, however you have just shamed me. :)

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[Zak3056]

What was that ,8,1 all about anyways? I remember you had to type it to load certain programs but I never knew the reason.

The 8 is the device address. Floppy 0 was 8, Floppy 1 was 9. I'm fuzzy on this because it's been years, but, IIRC the ,1 was used to indicate that the program should execute after loading--which is why when you loaded the directory listing of the floppy you NEVER used the ,1.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

As mentioned in an earlier post, the ,1 loaded to the address stored with the file and ,0 loaded to BASIC memory. The directory listing was loaded as a BASIC file and so you wanted it in BASIC memory. The reason there was an address other than C-64 BASIC memory loaded with a directory listing, though, is because the 1541 ROM was mostly lifted from the 4040 drives which were designed for the PETs. BASIC memory on a PET started at $0400 instead of $0800 like on a C-64. At $0400 on the C-64 was screen memory, so if you loaded a directory listing ,8,1 it would overwrite the C-64's screen memory.

How's THAT for trivia?

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[foofoodog]

Of course we would use l shift+o... And then sys c000.

Re:lemme see if i remember...

[schotty]

The 8 was the disk drive number (4 was tape and 8-11 was the 4 disk drives you could attatch).

The 1 told it to load it as machine language IIRC.

ah, the oldskool memories...

[sleepypants]

I remember using a joystick to navigate the UI, since mice were a bit of a rarity. Plus, GeoWrite actually had fonts to choose from, and they looked great on the trusty old dot-matrix (or 'impact printer', if you will...)

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[Slack3r78]

Not only did GEOS have fonts, it was possible to overload the system memory and crash the computer, forcing a reboot if you tried to load too many of them at once. Man, those were the days. :)

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[QueenOfSwords]

Heehee I remember that! Then we got the boxy Commodore mouse ! :) Ergonomic, I think not.
Got me through school assignments fine.
I wonder if you could put together an indestructable 'laptop', with a screen, a keyboard, and about a thimblefull of 'hardware' to run it on. Tweak it to support file transfer via USB. Kind of like the Newton-based eMac, or Alphasmart's Dana. It's a perfectly functional OS and the footprint doesn't get lower than that.

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[QueenOfSwords]

That's an eMate , not an eMac. I'm only a recent Mac nerd.

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[healy]

A Joystick? Bah, we would have killed to have had a Joystick! I my day, we had to browse the Geos with the clickity clackity brown thingy attached to the teevee!

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[forgotmypassword]

Dude you could do that in at least as late as Windows 95!

I remember because I did it. Too many fonts and Win95 would slow down to a crawl. Keep putting more in an eventually it would bite you.

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[scott_davey]

I remember using a joystick to navigate the UI, since mice were a bit of a rarity.

You didn't miss much. I had a Commodore mouse. As it plugged into the joystick port, the pointer would only move at angles of 45 degrees, just like a joystick :-(

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[GNUguy]

I had a trackball that was made for the atari 2600, it worked great as a mouse for geos on the C64.

Those were the days, things were so much simpler then.

-G

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't have any problems with the directions, if you moved the mouse slowly, it would go at other angles (up/left, up, up/left, up, up/left, up, kinda like drawing a line). The big problem was that it was just as speed sensitive as a digital joystick. Moving the mouse at max speed (which was slow), which just have the direction bit at true continously. This was not some kind of packet format, where the packets could come at different speed, it was one bit for each direction (four bits + a fifth for the button(s)).

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[jrutley]

GeoWrite apparently also has the precursor to Clippy. Check out the third screenshot.

Re:ah, the oldskool memories...

[Anonymous Coward]

The joystick port also has two analog inputs for paddles. The mouse you're thinking of, the 1350, was indeed only able to output digital joystick information. The 1351 was able to drive the two analog inputs and behaves just like a modern mouse would, except it has two analog outputs instead of a serial connection, like a PC mouse.

Emulator

[MagPulse]

Can someone post instructions on how to get this set up with an emulator like CCS64? We don't want to have to wade through that ten page explanation on how to use a real C64, copying around floppies, etc. to check this out.

Re:Emulator

[The Vulture]

I haven't done this yet, but I would imagine that you could create .D64 files (disk images), and use them.

However, it's hard to say whether or not this would work with an emulator or not. GEOS used fast-disk routines that ran in the drive memory of the 1541/1571/1581 drives, and if the emulator can't emulate the CPU in the drive (6502 in the 1541) and the 6510 in the C64 with 100% cycle exactness, then you'll have some problems.

-- Joe

Re:Emulator

[Martin Maciaszek]

Actually Vice does emulate the Commodore floppy drives which are basically autonomous computers themselves. You just have to activate "True drive emulation".

Re:Emulator

[The Vulture]

Yes, they make that claim. However, I have tried some programs in the past that did not work, because they used fastloaders.

The Commodore drives have five wires on the serial port (I think). Of those, I think only two of them could send data. One was the DATA line, the other the CLK line.

So, when the C64 was reading a file from the 1541, it would receive the bits one at a time over DATA, and use CLK to synchronize. This of course, was extremely slow, so somebody came up with a solution: send data over both lines, but make sure that the code on both sides was running at almost exactly the same speed.

So, the drive would break down the byte into bits, and send two bits at a time (when using the fastloader). The C64 would receive the two bits and reassemble them into the byte. But, since the CLK line was being used for data, the timing had to be precise, otherwise you'd miss bits.

So, the emulator has to emulate the drive and the C64 with 100% compatibility, or else it just won't work. Also, because sprites would mess up the CPU cycles, they had to be disabled, as did any funky IRQs (which normally there weren't any running), or you'd have problems with the data. Most fastloaders just blanked the screen, which took care of this.

-- Joe

Re:Emulator

[marcop]

Before I dumped my C-128 I copied my version of Geos 128 2.0 using the X1541 cable and the 1571 drive. Using Vice128 I am able to run Geos from the images. I have to make sure "True 1571 emulation" is checked though. I have the files at home so I can't write a
procedure.

Does anyone know if Geos image files can be distributed now that Geos has been released? Are those images still copyright?

Re:Emulator

[anti-trojan]

CCS64 has better emulation of a real 1541 drive. Most fastloaders I've seen work with it.

wow....

[56ksucks]

... I remember when I got my first 386. It came with something called PC GEOS. If it's the same type environment then it is a pretty decent piece of software. Unfortuantly I spilt coke on my PC Geos 5 1/4 floppy disks so it is lost forever for me. If that became availible for download I'd go get it.

Apple II Version was released 6 months ago.

[justdave72]

The Apple II version was released 6 months ago. as announced on a2central.com

Re:Apple II Version was released 6 months ago.

[Skyfire]

Wait... So something was released for a Mac before it was released for a different brand?

Re:Apple II Version was released 6 months ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... So something was released for a Mac before it was released for a different brand? The Apple II is not a Mac. It's what Apple made before there were Macs.

WTF. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Is up with this pic?

Brings back memories

[dtfinch]

I used GEOS (C64 version) a few times on my great aunt's C128. It ran very well considering the hardware it was running on. You see color screenshots on the site, but it really had to do all that with 2 color tiles. It had a wysiwyg document editor. It was even able to load normal programs and then restore itself when the program exited.

What about the HP OmniGo?

[virtualXTC]

Would this mean that I should expect more apps for my ol' skool classic the HP OmniGo? Or should I give up and retire it to the box of usless electronics that I swear to make work again someday?

Back in the day

[papadiablo]

I remember gettin GEOS for my Commodore 128, the thing was kickin. I mean, they were doing things that nobody else did. My friends are knockin down my door, for my new, commodore 64!

Seriously though, i had a version for my PC and it wasn't very good. Is this really a big deal?

How's the bandwidth in Afghanistan these days?

[Netsnipe]

Boy, won't Junis in Kabul be happy.

He won't have to watch his DivXs through aalib anymore.

Re:How's the bandwidth in Afghanistan these days?

[whiteranger99x]

yeah, now Junis or Akbar or whoever you refer to can watch it through PETSCIIlib :P

The cost...

[joeseph schmo]

"The price has been reduced to a very affordable $25 (plus shipping) for either version, GEOS 64 or GEOS 128."

Does that makes the TCO (total cost of ownership) more than Linux?

Re:The cost...

[QueenOfSwords]

Well, less, given the hardware.

OS problems, software corruption
Linux - dig through log files to find the error. Reinstall bits of OS. Eventually give up and reformat and reinstall. Perhaps replace HDD if that turns out to have been the cause.
GEOS - Turn off C64. Turn C64 back on. Load GEOS,8,1 . If that doesn't work, provide new copies of GEOS disks. Provide new data disk.

Cluster

[applerules]

Sure, GEOS is cool. But imagine a beowulf cluster of Commodores running this...

Re:Cluster

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if a beowulf cluster of C64's could read a disk as fast as an Apple II. And yeah, Apple's ruled back then too.

(Sorry, I haven't seen a good Apple II/CommodeDoor-64 flamewar in a long long time...)

AOL

[mattdm]

I'm loathe to admit this now, but I was one of the very first subscribers (I think the first -- not sure about the whole Quantum service and prehistory) to AOL in my town. This was before the Windows version, and the DOS version was actually a GeoWorks app. Or rather, it came with a GeoWorks runtime, which wasn't good for anyone else. I remember thinking it was really cool.

I was also on the beta team for AOL for Windows 1.0.

Damn I'm lame.

Re:AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an AOL 1.2 (or 1.5?) floppy, and for the heck of it I tried logging on (dial up modem only) several years ago. It worked! But I got a window telling me a newer version was available. I was damn impressed! Was nearly useless though, of course.

Re:AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn I'm lame.

No you aren't.. you were around to experience some very cool stuff before alot of other people, most of whom would be calling you lame anyways.

Re:AOL

[anagama]

My guess is you bailed on AOL early too ... only lame if you stuck with it.

I remember getting geoworks and aol somehow and using it for a while, maybe 1991. It was pretty expensive after the first free three hours (was it three??). However, if you went to the customer service area, they didn't charge money. For a while, people carried on their "chatting" in there (I can't remember if it was actual chat, or more like a bulletin board). That is till AOL got wise to the scam. That's when I bailed - I know by 1992 I was using Delphi. No pretty graphics at all, but at least I got 20 hours per month for my $20.

Re:AOL

[Frogbert]

Me too

Re:AOL

[mcmonkey]

Yeah, but did you buy any stock at the time?

Re:AOL

[Suidae]

My story is the same as his, except the screen name I used back in that GEOWorks AOL version is active to this day. My parents use the account, and I use the screen name with my Trillian messenger. If they ever shut down the account I loose my screen name.

Re:AOL

[bwy]

I remember paying long distance and the per-minute connection charge to Quantum. Man that got expensive. Back in those days there was no such thing as 2.9 cent a minute LD. Of course, I was used to paying LD to use the modem. There was only a couple BBS's in town and to fufill the 1:10 upload:download ratio, you had to dial to an out of town BBS to get new software to upload that neither of the local BBSs had. Luckily most of the out of town BBSs were really cool- if you were calling LD they waived the upload:download ratio.

BTW, those Commodore-based BBSs were SWEET! They all made great use of the extended character set (found on the fronts of the keys on the C-64) so you got a great color/graphics experience. Seemed much better than the use of mere ANSI on the old IBM boads like Wildcat! and others.

Re:AOL

[rogabean]

actually your old geoworks aol name wont be lost if they cancel the account, if you registered it with the AIM service as an AOL name. which if memory serves me right, you have to do to use it with trillian. thats how i still have an old name from an old aol account from years ago.

off topic i know, but related to your post

Re:AOL

[Suidae]

Well, cool. One of my parents disabled the screen name at one point and I had to go turn it back on because I couldn't log in via AIM. I guess disabling the account must be different.

Ahhh...takes me back...

[Paddyish]

...GEOS v1.0 had this cool feature I had never seen before at the young age of 6. The paintbrush in particular gave me hours of entertainment, and there were some nifty fonts as well. Annoying, however was the fact that the boot disk could not be copied by any conventional means, thanks to error track copy protection.

My dad never let me touch his sacred GEOS version 2.0 disks for that reason - that and his SX 64.

Soo...

[EduardoFonseca]

... now everybody wants to release their code. What is this? A new legal strategy?

Looks like...

[proverbialcow]

...the server's /.'d. And after only 80 replies, too.

That's what you get when you actually host a website on a C64 running Contiki...

Re:Looks like...

[whiteranger99x]

yeah, if i recall, i believe all the C64 users tried this:

LOAD"GETGEOSPROGRAM",8,1

And got

LOADING "GETGEOSPROGRAM"
SORRY WE'RE SLASHDOTTED ERROR
READY.

Re:Looks like...

[proverbialcow]

LOADING "GETGEOSPROGRAM"
SORRY WE'RE SLASHDOTTED ERROR
READY.

And the error is text-only because the number 404 causes overflow errors on the 6502, right? ;)

Re:Looks like...

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is :
LOADING GETGEOSPROGRAM
?SORRY WE'RE SLASHDOTTED ERROR
READY.

There is allways ? before error message and
2 spaces between error message and the ERROR word.

There are not " in file name given by computer.

Re:Looks like...

[BinaryCodedDecimal]

There is allways ? before error message and
2 spaces between error message and the ERROR word.

That's the first thing that came into my head, too (including the 2 spaces)! Jesus, we're pedantic...

Re:Looks like...

[Stavr0]

LOAD"GETGEOSPROGRAM",8,1
SEARCHING FOR GETGEOSPROGRAM
?DEVICE NOT PRESENT ERROR
OPEN1,8,15:INPUT#1,N,D$,T,S:?N,D$,T;S:CLOSE1
500 SLASHDOTTED 0 0

Heh..

[Darken_Everseek]

I'm willing to bet there are a good number of /. readers that are younger than GEOS (I'm not one of 'em). It's an interesting reminder of just how far computers have come.

Re:Heh..

[BiggerIsBetter]

Yup. We sure take for the current systems for granted. I mean, these days, even my car's EFI computer is much faster than the ZX81 and similar machines I started out with.

Re:Heh..

[BrookHarty]

I'm willing to bet there are a good number of /. readers that are younger than GEOS (I'm not one of 'em). It's an interesting reminder of just how far computers have come.

Back when I was using GEOS and Quantum Service.
The joys of going from 40 column to 80 column terminals, punter to xmodem, to ymodem to zmodem. Real Ansi (with reverse and blink!) 300 baud baby. First long distance phone bill and parents whipping my ass.

Then

Powerpacking workbench floppies and using the ram disk, when you had more memory (2 meg chip) than you floppy could use. Slurp connections with tcp config files that looked like the same as unix clones using a version .99 kernel.

then

First HD's, Rusty and Eddies, WWIV. Clone wars. 33.6 modems.

then

Winsock, browser, irc client, gopher, and installer on 1 floppy disk from your isp (I made one for my first company). Still using commandline gfx viewers because it had more file formats. Joys of a lan party over IPX.

then

Going from 16bit to 32bit tcp stack, and all the applications breaking, and the most unstable years of computing. Still booting to command line for some video games. Welcome to driver issues.

then, little later, 8K speeds, 16 if you bond those channels.

then (many many years, and many patches)

OS finally is stable, Great applications and games, awesome freeware. 150K net access. Lots of information at a couple clicks away. Many stable and application rich OS's to choose from.

It's been a long ride from GEOS to Openoffice.

Re:Heh..

[p00ya]

I'm 17 and I used GEOS "back in the day" (when I was 4 or so). Just how many sub-17 year olds do you think there are? I still have my SX-64 next to my bed. I'm tempted to sell it on ebay (I hear they have some antique value) but I don't know if I can bring myself to say goodbye to it.

Re:Heh..

[Darken_Everseek]

I can relate to a good portion of that; I still remember doing my first word processing on an Apple II; in all it's monochrome glory. VT-100 terminal emulation, playing Tradewars, LORD, and BRE on the local bbs. Getting freenet internet access; completely text based. Telnet chat programs. Good times.

new deal office

[hiroshi912681]

the latest incarnation of Geos for x86, New Deal Office, is still not released for free =( it's a neat OS that's very win95 like... even has a MS Office clone, web browser, irc, and instant messaging software. all this, and it runs on a 286! supports all kinds of graphics modes from hercules up to svga

I think they went outta business... they were charging way too much for it. might as well buy a new computer with win95 than pay for what they were asking for.

they had a demo avail on the net... I could never get the web browser to work. expired in 30 days or something, but that was extremely easy to turn off. I think the evaluation version was crippled (or was missing files), nonetheless.

Re:new deal office

[Brandybuck]

might as well buy a new computer with win95 than pay for what they were asking for.

Come on! The price was $99! A bit more expensive than the earlier GeoWorks Ensemble, but hardly prohibitive.

Re:new deal office

[edwdig]

Yes, New Deal went out of business. About 3 years ago cash was running low, and they signed a contract to get funding from investors. However, the money never showed up, so the company went under.

New Deal charged about $80, which included the operating system, the office suite, and a bunch of internet applications. If that's not worth $80, then you're just really damn cheap.

The last version to be officially released was a bit of a pain to get on the internet, as it didn't have a dialler application, and the ethernet support didn't work on a lot of networks. The next release had those issues fixed, but the company ran out of money right before going into production.

Geoworks ahead of the curve

[oingoboingo]

Geoworks was certainly an early pioneer in one area: unimaginative name conventions for its apps. Looking at the screenshots page, every damn app is geoThis, or geoThat. It's a wonderful trend that the KDesigners of the KDE KDestop KEnvironment have picked up one, as well as their GCompetitors Gover Gat Gthe GNOME GProject. And don't get me JStarted Jon Java JApplications.

Re:Geoworks ahead of the curve

[Duty]

I'd say the Mac had that convention locked down a few scant years earlier. Up 'til System (another name chock-full of unprecedented creativity) 7.5 or so, practically every piece of software that ran on the computer started with an M, followed by two other letters I'm sure you can guess.

Re:Geoworks ahead of the curve

[oingoboingo]

Yeah you're right, but it's Friday afternoon here and I'm already 4 beers into proceedings. Windows isn't a whole lot better for that matter...WinBlah, WinBlee. I'm trying to think of software names I really liked...Borland's Sidekick was a good name. Ahh fuck it I can't really think of anything else right now. I've recently transitioned from Linux to OS X, and as long as an app name doesn't start with 'i' I'm happy these days.

Re:Geoworks ahead of the curve

[CrackerJackz]

iDont know what your talking about.

iForgot a cheaver sig.

Re:Geoworks ahead of the curve

[davek99999]

iWon't.

so sad

[mister sticky]

the fact that the authors of this (ahead of its time) platform are nobodys, and bill gates is a household name is quite sad.

Re:so sad

[the_2nd_coming]

ahead of its time how?

1986, there already was the Mac.

Re:actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

but what if he wanted to poke his cock with your mom? havent you ever stuck something up your dick? quite fun

Reliability

[GeorgeTheNorge]

I had a C64 and GEOS in 1987. I don't remember it ever crashing. I remember being amazed that GEOS had most of what a Mac offered, on an obviously more limited machine in terms of memory, etc.

If I remember correctly, later versions of the C64-C128 had GEOS built in.

Hard disk? What's a hard disk?

Apple 2 Version

[darkjedi521]

I found the Apple 2 version here. As far as I can tell, this appears to be free, but unsupported.

You don't

[Sycraft-fu]

You do what most people who play C64 these days do, you emulate it. Even a pathetically old PC should ahve no trouble at all emulating a C64, and there is no lack of C64 emulators out there (www.zophar.net if you are interested).

Then again, maybe you do use C64 hardware, I've heard stranger thigns. I still remember playing a MUD in 1997, Realms of Despair. One of the guys I regularly hung out with had many characters, but only ever had one at a time on. Odd, that, as teh MUD let you log plenty in and even with a crap modem like I had you could handle lots. I mean it was just text after all. Turned out he used a C128 to connect to the net via a dialin that gave him a UNIX prompt. I was honestly stunned.

Re:You don't

[AndroidCat]

I still have a device that I keep handy for occasional debugging use. It allows me to do things like that with just a modem and no computer at all! It's called a video terminal. :^)

Pron looked crap

[cyril3]

on 64s and probably still does. Talk about bad for your eyes. It's a wonder we of a certain age can see at all.

Re:Pron looked crap

[gmhowell]

The resign Pron is making me go blind has nothing to do with screen resolution....

Not So Nostalgia

[Martigan80]

You know I still have a c64. Good got that out of the way.

I noticed that there are still Demo groups out there, specialy in Europe. I must say I'm still impressed as to what these programmers can do on a little 8-bit CPU. It think it's true are and skill to pack so much "entertainment" into a small amount of memory. Just because the CPU might be so many years old, but it can still do so much. Proof I think at the fact that technology may be increasing so fast that we don't use it to its fullest potential.

Re:Not So Nostalgia

[jayzee]

I recently coded a retro arcade game for an ad agency. We used (with permission) SID chip music for the soundtrack. I don't remember exactly where it came from (That was the designer's responsibillity) but it does appear that there are still people who take the SID chip extremely seriously ... Come to think of it, this is /. so they are probably reading this ...

Re:Not So Nostalgia

[Montag2k]

Your name doesn't happen to be Junis from Afganistan, does it? I heard that he dug up a C64 form somewhere...

-Montag

Re:Not So Nostalgia

[Kris_J]

The High Voltage SID Collection -- new stuff is added regularly. SID emulation doesn't do it justice, I use a real SID chip installed in my Catweasel MK3 and Acid64.

Re:Not So Nostalgia

[zalas]

With the advent of object oriented programming, and all the higher level implementation ideas, being able to program something like a C64 using assembly is starting to border on the level of a wizard. It's kinda sad, really. People just plopping down code blocks without realizing how bloated things have become. This is why I like embedded programming a lot more than the standard "software development" type programming out there.

Re:Not So Nostalgia

[bad-badtz-maru]

The song "Kernkraft 400" by Zombie Nation received significant airplay in the US. The dance song basically consists of a C64 SID chip driven synth lead over percussion.

Slashdot poll?

[xoran99]

It'd be interesting to know the age distribution of Slashdot readers. For instance, Microsoft is much older than I am, I predate the linux kernel... I was, however, born in the same year that the term "copyleft" was coined.

Re:Slashdot poll?

[Kris_J]

The year I was born:

• RCA releases the first RISC chip.
• Creative Computing magazine is founded.
• Ed Robert's only prototype Altair computer is lost in shipment by Railway Express.
• Kee Games spins off from Atari and creates Tank, first game to use ROM. Kee merges back with Atari.
• Home Pong created, but nobody will retail it.
• Telenet, the first public packet data service, a commercial version of ARPANET, makes its debut.
• Exidy company established.
• Philips acquires Magnavox (Philips Consumer Electronics)

Any cool programs or archives on Apple IIGS GS/OS?

[vmalloc_]

I remember using that really cool GUI on the Apple IIGS, and I was wondering if there was some way to run a telnet shell on it or something (or just an archive of GS/OS software link would be nice, that was a really cool operating system, almost looked exactly like a Macintosh (though I recall it wasn't much for multitasking).

I don't know why, but the IIGS is the coolest of the classic computers to me. It just looks really damn classy IMHO.

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[Splork]

hell yeah, i *loved* geoworks ensemble. i had a 286-20, it ran great. the integration between all of its office applications and the fact that it actually did preemptive multitasking of them was great. printing in the background (very important considering how "fast" dot matrix and hp deskjet printers of the day weren't), etc. excellent piece of work but in the wrong place at the wrong time to be able to catch on.

it even ran in the cool 800x600x16 vga mode if your monitor supported it.

another odd footnote: AOL's first client for the PC was written as a geoworks ensemble 1.0 application. this was in '93-94 before aol was allowed to corrupt usenet.

Re:Any cool programs or archives on Apple IIGS GS/

[vmalloc_]

By the way, I'm not a vintage GUI OS partisan.. I'm planning on dusting off that C64 in the basement too ;)

geos on a sharp zaurus with c64 emulator

[trs-sld]

I have never tried running the C64 emulator available for the zaurus, but I am betting most C64 stuff should run just fine on it. It would be interesting to run GEOS on the zaurus for kicks

Well it's a start...

[zoeblade]

...but what about the ever more popular Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit? Everyone I knew who had a C64 made at least three or four simple games on it.

Re:Well it's a start...

[whiteranger99x]

Admittedly, I cant say that I had (let alone used) SEUCK, but I remember that I had this software for Winblows 3.1 called Klik N Play which in essence did the same thing....thing is, i'll be damned if i remember anything I made that was worth spending more than 10 seconds on :P

Of course, maybe it's a sign that I should maybe, just maybe learn how to do real programming *sigh*

Re:Well it's a start...

[zoeblade]

Klik'N'Play was similar, but you could make any games with it, which made it a bit more complex. The great thing about SEUCK was that pretty much anyone who had a C64 and a joystick could make (admittadely bad) games in seconds and maybe even good ones after a few months :)

Re:Well it's a start...

[whiteranger99x]

Hey, ya gotta start somewhere :) It's not like anyone is going to create the next Doom, Unreal, Final Fantasy, etc. on their first try...i know, i tried LOL ;)

Ah...good times

[gordgekko]

GEOS prompted me to buy the mouse (1351 I think it was), the 3.5' disk drive (1581) and the 512K Ram Expansion Unit. Together with a fast loader cartridge you had a decent WYSIWYG system for far less than Apple or IBM offered. I used that system into the early 1990s.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[whiteranger99x]

FLAMEBAIT! :P

Actually, that whole "news for nerds" label is really more subjective than objective as far as I'm concerned. Even then, there's no need for you to proclaim that you're foregoing a slashdot subscription. Heck, i'd rather put the money to good use...like a combo meal at McD's for lunch :P

DesqView 386

[Zork the Almighty]

As long as we're re-releasing old software, is it too much to ask for a copy of DesqView 386 ?

Re:DesqView 386

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, I work for the company that now owns that code base.

Give up hope on that one. :)

Re:DesqView 386

[Alioth]

Oh, good 'ol DesqView, a legend in its lunchtime. I used that to run a RemoteAccess BBS along with my usual day-to-day use of my 16MHz 386 system, with a whopping 2.5MB RAM (all in discrete 32kbyte chips, populating a massive full-length expansion card)

I remember plugging in each of the chips, buying them 512K at a time in a long tube filled with the buggers. 'Wow, this is amazing,' I thought, 'each of these chips has as much memory as a complete BBC Micro!'

Re:DesqView 386

[Anonymous Coward]

It's available - Symantec released it a couple of years ago, after they bought out Quarterdeck, since they didn't have any interest. Or any source code remaining anywhere. Do a google search to find the d/l site.

Re:DesqView 386

[CPM User]

Try Here

One correction.

[juuri]

When released, it was the first commercial object oriented OS for the PC

Smalltalk was out before Geos, while it required dos to boot, once inside, it was an OS unto itself.

Re:One correction.

[William Tanksley]

I wasn't aware there was a Smalltalk for DOS at the time. My mistake.

Perhaps I could call PC-Geos the first consumer OO OS?

-Billy

Re:Call me flamebait...

[B47h0ry'5 CuR53]

If it's such a waste then why is the sixth link on your home page pointing to Slashdot? You'll probably wanna remove that too.

Atari 800 version?

[kevn]

Didn't they have something like this for the Atari 8-bit computers? I can't remember why, but I always hated commodore 64's (commies). Give me a 800xl anyday!!! kvn

Re:Atari 800 version?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes I did use it on an 800xl before I went wild and bought an ST (which turned out to be a waste since application support was feeble).

Re:Atari 800 version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there was a knock-off called Diamond for the Atari 8bits. It was done by one guy, and I don't think it sold for long based on the sorry state of Atari software sales at the time (early 1990's).

Funny C64 Disk Drive Engineering

[deathcow]

What kind of crack were the 1541 disk drive engineerings smoking? Did they even have crack back then?

The 1541 was a somewhat self-destructing device. As I recall, the designers needed a way to make sure the read/write head shuttle was properly aligned with the (freeway sized) magnetic disk tracks, so they rubbed their brain cells together and decided it was appropriate and OK to just keep seeking the head shuttle inwards until it violently slammed the read write head into whatever was blocking its way. Then it was sure to be at the end of its travel. klak-klak-klak-klak-klak-klak!

All my friends had C64's back then, and we all had one or two 1541's over time. Luckily, one of us was well versed at fixing the blasted things.

I think it was when the 1571 drive came out they stopped slamming the disk head shuttle repeatedly.

I will never forget my introduction to Infocom on my Commodore 64, what, its been 21 years!!! I played it straight until my 1541 died from exhaustion. It went tits up from Zork. I guess a grue ate the bastard.

Re:Funny C64 Disk Drive Engineering

[Jerry Kindall]

Funny, the Apple used the same trick of recalibrating by moving the head outward (not inward) until it hit the stopper at the end of the track. That was what caused the distinctive "chug-chug-chug" sounds the Apple drives made at startup as well as the grinding sound that preceded an I/O error. The difference in sound was caused by the timing: the boot sequence moved the head more slowly.

Strangely enough, Apple did not have any serious issues with the reliability of their floppy drives. It is my understanding that this was a more-or-less standard way of recalibrating the drive when you didn't know what track the head was already on. I'm surprised there were issues with this on the C64 drives.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a complete waste, nimrod! It's just not worth a subscription...

8 bit or 64 bit?

[axxackall]

on a little 8-bit CPU

8-bit? It's supposed to be 64-bit as I can tell reading the name c64. Otherwise, why is it c64?

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[Anonymous Squonk]

64K of RAM...

For extra credit, where did the "VIC" and the "20" in "VIC-20" come from?

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[kfg]

64K of RAM...

Because no one will ever need more than 64K of memory.

KFG

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Video Interface [Chip|Controller]

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[Anonymous Coward]

64K of RAM...

Hello, little computer. I respect you, even if you do only have 64K of memory...

-- Bernard Bernoulli, Day of the Tentacle

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[Bambi Dee]

Quoting this page: There is a lot of debate over the origins "20" portion of the VIC-20 name but the Commodore Executive responsible for the VIC's development, and the author of The Home Computer Wars, Michael Tomczyk, stated repeatedly that he choose the name simply because he thought it "sounded good". (For extra credit, why didn't they call it "VIC" in Germany?)

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[Bertie]

It's because it's pronounces "Fick", which of course is a rather word German verb pertaining to the act of copulation.

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[anti-trojan]

They also introduced a 128 KB version, C128. It also had two CPUs (6510 and Z80) from different manufacturers(!) that you can switch from one to the other. And of course, you could run it in "C64-compatible" mode.

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[Naelphin]

on a little 8-bit CPU

8-bit? It's supposed to be 64-bit as I can tell reading the name c64. Otherwise, why is it c64?

It has a monumentally huge RAM size of 64 Kilobytes. That's where the 64 comes from

Re:8 bit or 64 bit?

[axxackall]

Should I rename one of our servers to c12582912?

GEOS for DOS....and AOL!

[tkrotchko]

If you'll remember, before the AOL access software was a Windows application, it was previously a GEOS application; when you started AOL, a customized version of GEOS was started and then GEOS ran inside that.

This was just around the time that Windows 3.0 was beginning to be popular.

OT I know

[bobdole369]

But while we're talking about C= stuff...
Anybody remember AOL's predecessor Quantum Link?
How about the remarkable terminal program that turned 40 columns to 80 columns AND offered ANSI color to boot "Novaterm"?

Re:OT I know

[kylearin]

How about QLink's add-on Club Caribe, written by LucasArts? Precursor to Sims Online?

GEOS Available for Download After 18 Years

[infiniphonic]

now i have incentive to lift that mint condition C64 from work!

Re:GEOS Available for Download After 18 Years

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Or maybe all those 64's I've been hoarding in storage will now be worth something more than $3 on eBay :)

But, you'll have to pry the SX64 from my cold, dead hands.

My memories of GEOS

[Recovery1]

I used to use GeoPaint all the time with my old C64. It was the only paint program I was aware of that I could use with my color dot matrix printer at the time. The school computers were all Apple IIs and for some reason they couldn't even get Paintshop to produce in color (even though they had color printers), so it always impressed the teachers when I used my C64 for their stupid book reports.

The only drawback to GEOS was the fact it ran entirely from those 5 1/4 disks. They'd take forver to load and everytime I loaded up GEOS I'd have to set the clock. Betcha one of those harddrive units for the 64 would have made wonders for GEOS.

Apple 8 bit GEOS

[Wildstar128]

This version of GEOS is available at BreadBox the copyright holder of the GEOS name, trademarks for all versions of GEOS (with possible exception of the Commodore versions of GEOS) since purchase of GeoWorks/NewDeal.

CMDRKEY.COM/Click Here! Software had acquired production rights and very much may have acquired the copyright of the Commodore versions of GEOS from GeoWorks several years ago - LONG before BreadBox acquired GEOS.

To find the Apple 8 Bit versions of GEOS for the Apple II series will be found at www.breadbox.com for download as well as other versions of GEOS is available from BreadBox including the PC/GEOS aka GeoWorks Ensemble.

Commodore version is found at www.cmdrkey.com along with the GEOS DeskTop upgrade (OS upgrade) called Wheels which upgrades the GEOS package with an updated DeskTop system.

CMDRKEY.COM/Click Here! Software is ran by Maurice Randall.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently YOU DO feel the moderators sweet sting, and have switched to AC.

you should give it a rest for tonight.

Mac/Lisa Trash Can much earlier

[green pizza]

Huh? GEOS came out in 1986... the Apple Lisa shipped with a trash can icon in 1983, the Mac did the same in 1984. I belive it was first mocked up in 1982, check folklore.org for the specifics straight from the engineers themselves.
folklore.org

Re:Any cool programs or archives on Apple IIGS GS/

[green pizza]

It's been a long time since I've done much IIgs digging, but do a quick google and you'll find gobs of neat apps. I used to run Platinum Paint, Fantivision (animation), and gobs of games on my GS. There was even a port of Wolf3D, but it required 2 MB of RAM (I only had the stock 1 MB at the time).

The GS/OS (especially GS/OS 6.0) was very Mac-like. There was even a port of HyperCard. The GS had color and better audio a year before the Mac, but used wide rectangular pixels, so the overall resolution/quality wasn't all there. But still, it wasn't until the Mac IIsi many years later that a person could buy a color Mac for the price of a IIgs.

Copy Protection

[Jan-Pascal]

The GEOS article under the first link talks a lot about the copy protection on GEOS, and why it hurt widespread acceptance so much. Am I the only one who was able to produce the "special" track on copies of the GEOS disk, so that the copies would actually work?

If I remember correctly, I found the checking code somewhere in GEOS, then wrote some code to produce the proper patterns on the disk. Mind you, that code had to run inside the 1541 disk drive, so that it could determine what would be written to disk directly.

Those were the days...

Re:Copy Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

I just took a FC3 snapshot of the system right after it finished the copy protection and loading the kernal, and right before it uploaded the DOS code into the drive. All I'd have to do was load the system image, run it, wait 3 seconds, and it'd load the deskTop.

Re:Copy Protection

[Anonymous Coward]

Final Cartridge was crap. Action Replay rulez...

Re:Copy Protection

[Cyno]

No, I just used Maverick or that other tool and burned it all onto my 1581 disk. I had the whole "os" on that disk, desktop, word processor, paint program, everything.

Those were the days...

720k baby, yeah!

Now my OS needs at least 5GB of disk space to make me feel comfy.

Re:Copy Protection

[udif]

No, you weren't the only one.

The question is - were you able to create this special track using a "USR" file that you sent to the 1541 as a command? (the phrase OPEN 1,8,15,"..." rings distant bells in my head...)

"USR" type files could contain 6502 assembly programs that would be loaded INSIDE the disk drive and run there.

I also had the source code for the C64 kernel and basic, as well as the 1541 disk drive.

Re:Copy Protection

[Jan-Pascal]

Yes, I had to upload an assembly program to the 1541 RAM and execute it there. It looked a lot like the code that GEOS used to check for the special track, but with writes instead of reads.

OPEN 15,8,15,"" was used to issue commands to the 1541. "N0:name" for formatting a disk, etc. A URL for 1541 commands is http://www.auto.tuwien.ac.at/~rlieger/Power20/Docu mentation/Power20-ReadMe/AB-Floppy_Commands.html

Re:Copy Protection

[udif]

Well, whagt I was saying that I didn't need to upload code to the 1541 by loading it using a BASIC program.

All I needed to do was to issue a command such as:

OPEN 1,8,15,"U0:FILENAME,USR"

or something like that (I reallyt forgot the syntax). The point was that there was an undocumented command that sending it to the 1541 would cause the 1541 to load the USR type file into its internal memory and execute it there, no C64 loader needed!

Udi

Geoworks Ensemble?

[mirabilos]

What's with Geoworks Ensemble? It used to be a
fine piece of GUIware, too...
And since GEM has been free for years, this would
probably complete the list (tho I'd like to get
my hands on DOS 3.3 and Windows 2 and 3 sources
as well).

PC-C64 file server programs

[Man In Black]

Actually, the program you mention already exists! In fact, there are two of them: server64 and 64hdd (I don't have any links to provide at the moment, so load up your favorite search engine I suppose).

Now, I've tried both of these, and I honestly can't remember which one was which. The first one I tried (I think it was server64) didn't work at all... and I never figured out why.

The second one (I guess 64hdd) worked amazingly well! All you had to do was build an X1541 cable (someone else already linked to the page with the information... luckily, I had already built one of these when I was 10 or so in order to "pirate" C64 games, so I used that)... With the X1541 cable connecting the parallel port of the computer to the serial port of the C64 (or of a connected drive, since they daisy-chained), you could easily load and save programs from the computer's hard drive.

I set up a 486 with an 80 meg hard drive (enormous by C64 standards) with no monitor or keyboard simply acting as a fileserver for my C-128. The only problem was that the 486's CMOS battery had died, so if the machine ever lost power, I had to drag a monitor and keyboard downstairs to reset all the BIOS information :( I eventually gave up on it because I didn't use it very often (I still have plenty of blank 5.25" disks), and keeping it running 24/7 was a pain in the butt.

The program actually let you create and browse directories (although in a rather painful manner, since the C64's BASIC wasn't well suited for this), and you could keep .d64 files on the hard drive and attach them at will using commands from the C-64. I can't remember off-hand what the speed was like... I seem to remember it being even slightly faster than the 1541, but I might be mistaken.

Unfortunately, .d64 files don't carry enough information to properly do all the goofy copy protections, so you'd have to rely on cracked games if you were pirating (hackers were usually forced to remove speed-loaders when cracking games, so these versions often have painfully long load times)... and naturally, doing multi-disk games didn't work either, since changing disk images could only be done from BASIC (Maybe you could do it from the PC, I forget). It certainly doesn't replace disks, but it'll provide essentially limitless data storage for all your homebrew and hobbiest stuff.

Re:PC-C64 file server programs

[Anonymous Coward]

When I cracked C64 games, I always added the fastloader routine I ripped from Fast Hackem. Ghost N Goblins was the hardest. It used nearly all the RAM of the C64 -- including the RAM underneath the ROM, etc. The last loading stage I wrote jumped to a small routine I put in the tape buffer area so I could turn off and overwrite the fast loader with the last of GNG's data. Those were the days!

Don't forget Xerox Star in 1981

[green pizza]

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox- 8010/index.html

For the low low price of $17,000 the Xerox Star had a better GUI than the Lisa, Mac, or Geos. Ran on beefier hardware too.

Neat stuff, I wonder if a Xerox Star emulator would ever be possible...?

Re:Don't forget Xerox Star in 1981

[humankind]

Speaking of the Lisa, there's nothing like a computer that tells you it's not ready to be turned off after you hit the power button.

Re:Don't forget Xerox Star in 1981

[Bambi Dee]

I just love (well, okay, *like*) the look of these GUIs. All the TrueColor-and-we've-gotta-prove-it "3D" glitz everyone's compulsively indulging in these days seems so silly compared to the screenshots on that Xerox Star page, or Apple's earlier offerings, or, heck, Win 3.11, pre-OS2 Amigas, GEM, GEOS, ...all were so much calmer and classier than anything in use these days. Ahwell. /me stares at Fisherprice-themed XP desktop full of happy KDE icons

Head alignment

[Gordonjcp]

I used to work in a computer repair shop in the early 90s, when we were just catching the tail end of the 8-bit computers (I can still diagnose all the ZX Spectrum "stock faults" with a two-second look at the screen). We had a 1541 alignment disk, that had the "boot" tracks written really "hot" so even very badly out-of-alignment drives would read them, then tracks that started off deliberately too far out, worked their way to perfect alignment, and eventually were too far in, across the surface of the disk. What happened was, it would boot off the disk, then start reading the "test" tracks until it found the track where it got the least CRC errors. Then it would smack the head off the end stop a few times, and try reading the disk again. Painful to listen to, and took all night (I feel sorry for the people in the flat above the shop), but it *always* worked. Second thing to try after a headcleaner.

Re:Head alignment

[Mr. Piddle]

Were you one of the guys who would look at a broken C64 thoughtfully and say, "It could be the power supply...that'll be $45. Thanks." I hated those guys, especially after my dad fell for them once (great, two working power supplies and still one broken C64).

Re:Head alignment

[Gordonjcp]

Nope, although I didn't like C64s much. I was more "Let's try the workshop PSU - nope, it's not the PSU, you'll need to leave it" or "Let's try the workshop PSU - yup, it's a dead PSU, that will be 28 quid please." We sold 3rd party PSUs. I think they were switched mode, but I don't know how that worked for the 12VAC supply to the C64. They were a hell of a lot lighter than the stock ones, and never ever failed.

Development environment?

[AndroidCat]

I looked at Geoworks in the start of the 90's. It really was a slick package that got a lot out of low-end machines. (It would run on an 8088 PC. With Win3.0 you could sort of, but hell no, not really.)

As I recall, the main hold-up for using it was that the development package for apps was either (1) expensive as hell (2) required a workstation rather than a PC to develop on. I think they eventually changed that, but by then it was moot. Rather than bundling a GUI like GEM or Win2.1 with an app, you just assumed that everyone had Win3.x already installed and screw older hardware. Pity. I guess none of the gnomes ever figured out that "???" was "Provide easy/cheap development environment to build grass-roots support" until it was too late.

How can I get this onto TAPE?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can I get this onto TAPE?

Re:Call me flamebait...

[eclectro]

Well my friend, you may not be a nerd.

My first "real computer" was a C64 too.

Part of being a nerd is exploring technology and how it works technically and works in our lives.

By looking at our history and the roads we have travelled, we get a better sense of where we are at in time and where we want to be in the future.

Seeing this story on slashdot, I thought about the usefulness of this application and reflected that it was all done on a eight bit 6502 derivative operating at 1 Mhz with 64k of memory.

I know many on here reflected the same way and immediately started thinking of applications that might be generated. I didn't even know that "Contiki" or "Lunix" existed. These would be easy to port to an embedded device.

Many of us on slashdot have ham-radio licenses. Much of the "old" technology that ham's were investigating in the seventies have become economic realities now thirty years later. I remember when I was riding on a bus and I made a phone call on a repeater with my handy-talkie. Every body thought that was "cool". Now people just get annoyed when it's done on a cellphone. So by reflecting on "old" technology, we can maybe recycle it for use into "new" technology

Many on here like to listen to "glass audio", or "antique radio". You can learn a lot about technolgy and design issues when restoring an old radio. Many of these same issues occur in modern day electronics as well (like dried out capacitors).

For christmas I bought one of those joystick "namco" game that plug directly into the TV. It was loaded with five arcade games which included pac-man, dig dug (my personal favorite), and galaxian. I thought that my six year old niece would be the only one to get a kick out of it, but the whole family did. Just because these games were "old" did not make them any less fun. And Namco was brilliant for taking this "old" technology and repackaging it in an accessible and fun format. The thing that's nice about these games is they have a zero learning curve. You can sit down and immediately play a game and relax and not have to worry about game complexity that many PS2 games have.

Just because these things are not "new" does not make them "irrelevant" to a nerd's life. On the contrary, nerds embrace such things.

Old radio, glass audio, retro-gaming, and antique computing represent technologies that brought us to this particular point in time. So it is very much a part of a "nerd's history" (this one's anyway).

Even though I may not be actively participating in them, I enjoy reading about the adventures of others, and see what they are learning and developing with them. With a sentimental eye in this "throw away" society we live in, I'm glad to see others keep the (nerd's) flame alive.

So, it's all about interest in technology, whether it be old or brand new that makes a nerd "a nerd". These things, both "old and new" will matter to the nerd on a deep, cerebral level. As compared to an average person that is "just a user" and would just as likely throw away the antique radio than repair it. Or the old computer, as it "does not matter" to them any more.

I think you fall in this latter category of "user".

I mean no offense and I hate to say it, but for the above reasons, you may not be a "nerd".

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

you really are simple. everyone feels moderation. i'll expend karma to make a point, but not on bickering with a fool. i clearly don't need a +2 to get your attention!

You bastards!

[smokin_juan]

You broke their download site! Anyone got a mirror?

Re:You bastards!

[smokin_juan]

Where's the torrent seed?

GEOS 128 was a killer app

[ablaze]

I used GEOS 128 with a RAMLink drive on my C128-D (metal case). It started in seconds and was blazingly fast. Together with GeoPubisher it was a great way to do dtp. GEOS 128 could be run in 80 chars mode and had a much better resolution.
GeoProgrammer was a great development enivronment, too, btw.
The CMD RAMLink drive was very nice for playing The Last Ninja, too. It all loaded in an instant.

C64 sucks!! XBox is much better!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

first post!!! you lame assholes... I can post first because my XBox is a american product and my pride in my great country and my great XBox accelerate everything...

If only they would make games for that bitch... IAve played Metroid Prime and it ruled... I hope M$ will buy those japanese bastards and port Metroid to my great american console system!!!

Re:C64 sucks!! XBox is much better!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL.
Ofcourse XBox is better, and that's not the point. C64 was a good computer in it's time (in the beginning of 80's), and there are still people who like to code for/play with it.

Japanese? Are you confusing C64 to N64? :D

Re:C64 sucks!! XBox is much better!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not proper to use an apostrophe when referring to second person possessive. "it's" should ONLY be used to contract "it is". FYI. Peace brother.

This is kindof sad

[moro_666]

that there has been no real evolution in pc history for 18 years except the buttons look more nice today.
[excel,word and solitaire is there, it's the must be office kit!]

/.'ed

[jgregs75]

Anyone have a mirror? Even at 2am MST people with nothing better to do are DOSing these poor souls servers. Oh well, the C64 will have to keep as a mouse condo for another day or two.

AOL on GEOS

[FreekyGeek]

Most people won't remember, but AOL was originally released on GEOS. I was one of the beta testers.

Re:AOL on GEOS

[4b696e67]

Not exactly. Q-Link (AOL before it was AOL) was released with GEOS, but did not run in GEOS. Q-Link ran native on the C-64.

Re:AOL on GEOS

[N2UX]

In fact, I was using Q-link as early as '83, long before GEOS was released.

Re:AOL on GEOS

[Frogbert]

Me too!

Re:AOL on GEOS

[jkubecki]

From the PC/GEOS History page:

America Online client Released in late 1990. Also referred to as PCAO, to distinguish it from the Windows-based client, WAOL. Version 1.0 was the very first client software for AOL. This was a minimal installation of PC/GEOS. PCAO was updated quite frequently, with versions 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 released across 1991 and 1992. Version 1.5a was released in late 1993, and was followed in 1994 by version 1.6. Surprisingly, this occured after the release of the 2.0 client for Geos 2.0 (see below). PCAO required a Tymnet or Sprint connection. AOL stopped supporting Tymnet around 1995, and abandoned Sprint recently, so PCAO is now officially unsupported completely.

Re:AOL on GEOS

[FreekyGeek]

I was talking about AOL on a PC, not a C-64. I remember running AOL/GEOS on my 16Mhz PC.

Re:AOL on GEOS

[dstrauss]

Well, Q-Link went live in September 1985, although versions of the PlayNet software that preceded Q were around for a bit before that, but I don't think as far back as '83.

Amazing... reminders of the Amstrad Mouse

[erf007]

My god, this reminds me of the first time my grandfater brought home a new mouse for our Amstrad CPC something... you know those old black macines with the intergrated tape drive in the keyboard, all the smarts in the keyboard and the memory module at the back?

It took me forever to work out how to drive this thing, I must have been about eight at the time. At that stage it was the most amazing device I had ever seen. Who had ever thought you could point at icons on the screen and make things happen!

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Harsh... but fair. Someone mod this up please.

No, no, they weren't the bad guys back then

[spun]

They were actually kinda cool and hip, if you can believe it. This was several incarnations prior to today's SCO Group, back when they were the Santa Cruz Organization. The world isn't black and white you know, and the shades of gray tend to change over time.

Now I've done it. I'm really due for a good stoning now!

Priest: Now let me make this perfectly clear. No one is to stone anyone, even if, and I repeat, even if they do say SCO!
Crowd of 'Gentlemen': STONE HIM!

Yes, for some reason I'm on a 'Life of Brian' kick tonight.

Re:No, no, they weren't the bad guys back then

[The Unabageler]

I think you're more in for a SCOning than a stoning ;)

Hmmmm

[humankind]

Wow. Maybe I'll release the source code for all the Shareware I distributed during that time as well. Anyone still using Turbo Pascal?

I guess the big winner in this issue are not the software developers, but the thrift stores.

Heh...

[WWWWolf]

I borrowed GEOS 1.2 disks from school because no one was using it anyway. I still have it somewhere, and last I heard, no one even knows it's missing =)

Great operating system. The only reason why I liked Windows 3.0 more was because it was slightly faster (Thanks to disk turbo, strangely only slightly, when we compare a 1MHz C64 and 16MHz 386SX... my standards for speed were a bit different those days, slow disk drives teach patience =) and ran from hard disk.

Good that it's freely available now, without need of obscure abandonwarez sites. It sure is something every C64 needs!

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[MrvFD]

I used GEOS with a 10MHz 286 + EGA display (640x350 w/ 16 colors), and it was amazing. It was even more amazing since it took probably at least 5 years before there was any Windows version that would work as well and snappy (in all situations) as GEOS did on a 10-100x slower computer. Of course it was just the "feeling", but shows that how much more usable alternatives there could have been. And when I occassionally have to use WinXP nowadays, I just wonder why I have to wait ages for Windows to do _something_ (as GUI hangs) when trying to open an FTP site, browsing Samba shares or as a special case here trying to open the Start-menu which loads some icons or something over the network...

Sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

..but that's no Macintosh circa 1984, or even close. You pay for what you get.

Re:Sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, the Mac had ... uh... a one button mouse! Yeah, that's it. And a small monochrome screen! Yeah! And a detacheable keyboard! The C64 just fit on your lap. Yeah! Wow! What a great machine the Mac was! Let me plop down hundreds more $!!!

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[WWWWolf]

another odd footnote: AOL's first client for the PC was written as a geoworks ensemble 1.0 application.

Speaking of AOL - since the GEOS site in the article is slashdotted, I wonder if it comes with the Quantum Link software? I hope not =)

Echoes of the past..

[LibrePensador]

Suddenly, I feel so old and jaded. Why must you bring out the past in this manner?

Oh, why, why?

On a more serious note, it's interesting how innovation always appears to be right around the corner, yet it doesn't happen fast enough when you breath and live technology.

And while technology has indeed evolved a great deal, I am not sure whether I can say that it has effected the type of social change that I once thought it would bring about.

School work

[Bender Unit 22]

I was writing a English paper in Geos just after starting at a new school. And my english teacher asked me if the computer could help me write it because it was really good. :D. damn, it didn't even have spallcheacking.

on a side note: my grades then went from really low to the top because the english teacher in my old school didn't like that I used American expressions and word instead of English/England. And so she kept on smoking what she insisted was called fag's in daily speech.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we need more whiney "Your rights online" articles from Timothy. More SCO stories (Two a day, at least!) More tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories about vaguely worded patents where everyone can get all frothy and confuse basic terms such as "patent", "copyright" and "trademark". More articles about P2P and movies where everyone can confuse the RIAA & MPAA, and get the acronym "DMCA" wrong. Thats what "News for nerds" is all about; none of this computers, physics and blowing-shit-up rubbish!

You're an idiot. Please go away.

C64 SID synth chip.

[FauxReal]

The sound chips of the C64 were revolutionary for the time, and even today are still sought after by SID music enthusiasts and other PC music junkies (for use in PC board hardware - such as HardSID), and quite frankly I would like two of them myself!

If you like the classic SID sounds, then you'll love the SidStation Synth. Somebody get me one before they run out of chips!

Slip Dialin

[nurb432]

Make a slip dialup on your pc, run a tiny bbs, attach a null modem cable between the two and download it to the C64...

Geoworks Ensemble

[Elektroschock]

I enjoyed to use Geoworks Ensemble on my 386, later relaunched as New Deal Office.

This was in the Win3.1 world a strong and superior Desktop environment in motif style. It failed because the SDK was not available for a long time. Applications were very small, 100% object oriented and very very fast.

I tried to get to run it on Dosbox, however I failed, but I was only able to try a installed version from my 386 HD backup as I cannot install it from scratch (no 5.25 floppy and my old 386 is gone). Perhaps you should give it a try. I have some .000 Geowrite files , that I cannot read anymore. Goewrite could export it to .txt. but when I cannot run Geoworks Ensemble I cannot translate the files. I think there is no file format description, the files are actually a kind of memery dump I was told.

There are many GEOS versions- I had it on my phone

[blorg]

It was the OS on the Nokia 9110 Communicator. The CPU was a 33Mhz AMD i486 clone, and there was a working port of Freedos (there was talk of Linux and BSD ports, but I don't think they ever happened). I had this phone before the mobile operators in Ireland were really aware of cellular internet access; they used to allow (9.6k GSM) internet access for only 1p/minute (e.g. the same as the fixed line price). With the full keyboard it was a very handy tool for email and telnet, although web-surfing was a bit of a pain. Still faster than my 1200/75 C-64 modem though!

Man that is one slow download

[Anonymous Coward]

GEOS Available for Download After 18 Years

Man that is one slow download

This could be interesting...

[Mistshadow2k4]

...but the article doesn't say anything about the source code. Too bad if that's not availalble. GEOS may be outdated, but I can imagine how it could be turned into a modern OS by hackers who use it as a base. That would take a lot of work, but if there were several talented people who care about it enough to start with, we could have another quality OS to consider having on our computers in a year or two.

Btw, the download site specifically says it's down due to the slashdot effect,

Hordes!

[gnuLNX]

"Hordes of Commodore 64 users are expected to download the system."

Wow I didn't know their were hordes of people still using the C64. It was my fist comp, but jeez man I have probably upgraded at least 10 times since then.

Speaking of PC-GEOS...

[garg0yle]

I've had an idea for a while (actually, I have many ideas, but this one is actually printable).

One of the perceived problems with Linux (for the masses) is its complexity, and the truth is that for the average end-user, Linux does a lot more than it needs to for a typical end-user. I sometimes wonder if a "cut-down" Linux distro, with tighter integration with the X interface (but not so tight as Windows) and removing some of the server-level stuff (like SMP for example) might be able to crack the "average user" marker.

Now, I might be a complete crack-bunny here (that's happened before), but a GEOS work-alike based on a Linux kernel could be an interesting thing to go with. After all, the price is right. :-) Strip it down so the only install is a desktop, take out the heavy-duty code that we all love but my mom would never use, and pitch that to the charities and schools.

Whaddaya think?

264 series, too

[Bambi Dee]

Sadly, there's no mention of GEOS for the Apple 2 series of computers, which also enjoyed this fine precursor of GUIs to come.

So does the Commodore Plus/4. Seems you can (still?) order copies on "real" disks for $5 or EUR 10 provided you already own the C 64/128 version, for whatever weird reasons. Above-linked site doesn't seem to take this new status of GEOS into account, though.

Well, not that anybody cared... I still like the Plus/4, that's all.

bofh quote

[slart42]

?!

Right.

"You've heard of Commodore 64's?" I ask

"Yes?.."

"Avoid them like the plague! Not many people know this, but computers aren't made to handle that much memory - it's over 64, 000 things, more in some cases. It's a recipe for disaster!"

"Oh!"

"Try something safe and proven. A ZX81 with dual cassette drive if you can get it. The 1K ram model. Write that down. Don't buy a disk drive - You know how they're always failing, but music cassettes last forever!"

"Hey thanks!"

"No worries. What was your username again?"

ewwww

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine, these are uglier than Windows3.1, probably less usable too. GUI doesn't mean user friendly or efficient or whatever it only means GUI and those OS are there to prove it, command line can suck but GUI can suck too (pun unintended).

Re:Hordes?

[MrBlint]

I think it should have said "hoarders of C64s". After all you'd have to be a bit of a junk collector to still have one.

Is this a coincidence??

[N2UX]

Just yesterday I booted GEOS off of original floppies on the Commodore SX64 that sits here in my cube. It booted just fine, despite being loaded from floppies that are nearing 20 years old.

GEOS was a great system in it's day, and probably would be still around if not for the raping of Commodore by corporate raiders.

Solved my printing problems it did!

[Mantrid]

I remember using this in High School - the problem was the C64 printer couldn't print descenders in text mode, so all my "g"s and "p"s where pushed up and the teachers didn't like that.

With Geos I could print just about any font, but boy do those dot matrix printers make a racket printing graphics!

Re:Solved my printing problems it did!

[smithmc]

With Geos I could print just about any font, but boy do those dot matrix printers make a racket printing graphics!

Not as much as my TTX daisy-wheel printer, I'll bet. Perfect text, no graphics though.

Nothing new.

[ggruschow]

I clearly remember GEOS being widely available for download when it first came out. Sure modems were slower back then, but I'm pretty sure everyone that wanted it got it already.

trash can lineages

[jpellino]

um, I'll check the math, but:
the Mac in 1984 had a trash can before GEOS 1.0 in 1986...
the Lisa had it a bit earlier on their desktop...
and they may have been inspired by the Xerox Star / Elixir Desktop that traces back to 1981...

Cool! Now bring back GEM!

[csoto]

GEOS was great, but I cut my teeth on the Graphical Environment Manager and Ventura Publisher. Remember those GEMs? I think Xerox owned them. Not sure who owned them last...

Open source?

[Gilesx]

Too bad they didn't open source it - KDE could really use the help...

You say that, but...

[Half-pint HAL]

There was an individual who, during the mid-to-late nineties, wrote a package to run software from the original C64 GEOS on IBM PCs. He never released it as CMD didn't want him to (they probably couldn't have stopped him, but he chose not to release it anyway). With this free download release, that package may now reappear and become a bizarre yet effective way to put a tried-and-tested, low-cost office environment onto a low-powered handheld PC. (Highly suitable for low-resolution/low-colour screens!) As the file formats are completely stable (there will be no ongoing development), handheld/PC synchronisation would be pretty future-proof, and if native GEOWrite file format support was to be added to StarOffice, we'd have a neatly integrated setup.... HAL.

Awesome! Another free 64 bit OS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not familiar with this Commodore, but another 64 bit OS ought to help. Maybe Linux can borrows some of its...

Wait, you said 64 what?!?!?

Re:Awesome! Another free 64 bit OS!

[Anonymous Coward]

C64 is 8 bit ;P

OT: Re:Geoworks?

[jsebrech]

This is sort of off-topic, but relevant to the parent.

I'm looking for Geoworks to throw onto some 486's I want to bring back to life -- the last version I remember had a web-browser and everything!

If the 486's have at least 16 megs of ram, and are at least 33 mhz machines, you can put a stripped down debian on them with a custom compiled linux kernel, opera, abiword, and some really lightweight wm like pwm. It does work at a decent speed, but you have the advantage of using software updated for this millenium. If opera is too bloated as a webbrowser (only on low end 486's, since opera is ridiculously light) you could try dillo, which doesn't support all the standards, but is usable for webbrowsing.

I ran debian like that on a 486 DX4/100 with 20 megs of ram and an 800 meg hd for a long time. Worked great. Usable as a primary desktop. As long as you don't want to multitask ofcourse, but then on a 486 multitasking is pretty much out of the question anyway. That was with the regular debian Xfree, which I suppose could be seriously stripped down, but I stopped stripping down once I got the desktop functionality I wanted working at a decent speed.

A 386 can be made quite useful with linux if you stick to shell apps. There are a ton of great shell tools. Links or w3m for webbrowsing, latex for making pretty documents (you don't need to see the graphical output of something you do in latex until you print), any of the norton commander clones for a shell. Useful, even with only 8 megs of ram.

Re:OT: Re:Geoworks?

[szilagyi]

I've had good luck using a similar class of machine as an X terminal. Of course the graphics were limited by the video card. The then-current KDE (about a year ago) worked fine over a 10Mb Ethernet.

I also went with Debian, and I also found the machine capable of light work. But, as an X terminal, it was perfectly responsive for everyday work with "modern" software. (The 640x480 screen was a little small for Mozilla.)

geos was cool but...

[deviantonline]

i used to think geos was really neat back in the c64 days, but i found that it was just too slow and most likely limited by the fact that the system only had 64k of ram. i think too the fact that it ran from a floppy drive made it pretty darn slow, especially when i only had the one.

anyways, very cool to see this has been released ... ahh the memories!

Rock'n'Roll

[comet69]

Geos was definitely great for its time... does anyone know if they version thats available for download is for C64 only??

i remember in the later 80s and early 90s they released a version of Geos for PC x86.. i hope this version will be available for download.. i have some old shitty computers that would be fun to to geofy.. if not i guess i'm going to have to get the ol' C64 out of the closet..

anyone have a C64 floppy drive cable for sale ?? :-D its that weird din cable.. *lewks @ ebay*

Enviable Boot Time?

[funkify]

Enviable boot time? You gotta be kidding. I used to wait for ages for my games to load on the C64. Yes, you do get a command prompt immediately, but MAN was waiting for games SLOW... or at least they seemed that way to a 10 year old.

callin' this one out!

[Fleeing Peon]

Near laser quality from a mere 24-pin and my old '286.

Ok, I'm enjoying this thread, but COME ON! A dot matrix printer with near laser quality? Most dot matrix printers I remember cut more groves into the paper as much as they printed ink!

Re:callin' this one out!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, sure, why not? A 24-pin printer with the right ribbon and good quality paper did give very good text output. Graphics are not so great.

Re:callin' this one out!

[PantsWearer]

Actually with an good driver, not one was text great, but line art too. Macs used the old ImageWriters for years and when you're limited to b/w, a good, cheap, "impact" printer worked wonders.

I used an ImageWriter II with an old Apple //c until 1992 and still used the ImageWriter with my Mac IIsi after that.

Re:callin' this one out!

[William Tanksley]

:-)

Geos disproves that!

Geos 1.x printed beautiful, crisp black-and-white text and graphics (the text was rendered from outline fonts, by the way). Geos 2.0 did the same, but added a "high quality" setting, in which the printer would make 4 passes over each line.

You had to be careful with stuff printed at high quality -- not only was the paper wet from all the ink, it would also be sliced in places.

So that proves that dot matrix printers print more ink on the page than they cut grooves into the paper :-).

-Billy

Re:Call me flamebait...

[jdavidb]

Many on here like to listen to "glass audio", or "antique radio". You can learn a lot about technolgy and design issues when restoring an old radio. Many of these same issues occur in modern day electronics as well (like dried out capacitors).

If you know anything about this, perhaps you can answer a question I've been wondering about. I have the ability to tell from another room when a television is on, even when that television is muted, and even when I don't have any visual cues (reflected light). I suspect this is because of sound, but I'm not completely sure. I know that some older televisions when muted actually still produced the sound, just very, very quietly. But I left my television on with my DVD player as input last night, with no sound, and I could still tell it was on this morning. Is there something in modern televisions that makes a background noise that I am picking up? Would older televisions and electronics do this, too?

My apologies if this is completely unrelated and you don't know; I've just heard people talk about the "warmth of the sound" from old radioes and wondered if there were a connection.

First post...

[Anonymous Coward]

or I would have, but my C64 with 300 baud modem took this long to load the article, the "post comment" page, and then post my "first" post.

I'm upgrading to an Amiga 500 in a couple of years, dagnabbit.

Re: interface is simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Building the interface you speak of is really easy. All you need is a serial port plug (or is it paralell port? I don't remember), some wires and a DIN plug (which you can find for 50 cents at electronic surplus stores).

The next step is downloading Star Commander which is just like the old DOS Norton Commander...

Favorite GEOS Feature

[avgjoe62]

While learning to program in geoAssembler, I discovered that the panic subroutine was:

PROD- Panic Roll Over and Die

Re:Call me flamebait...

[infochuck]

This is NOT "news for nerds." Maybe "news for dinosaurs," or perhaps "nerds for antique collectors." But not news for nerds. Hell, my first machine was a C64, and I couldn't care less about this. And this is NOT "stuff that matters."

Dude. Duuude. Dude! Wassup? How can you claim to have had a Commie and *not* be interested in this? I cut my nerd teeth on the C64 (CoCo doesn't count - I barely remember using it, and I was so young (like 6) that I could be mistaken here - maybe I was using KoKo? Was CoCo/KoKo the software? I don't think it was a tandy - I used it to draw boxes, basically. I remember something about a 'turtle', and pens. Pen up. Pen down. Anybody know what I'm talking about?).

Anyway, you must either be dead inside, a liar, or just a luser. I see shit like this and get whisked back to my childhood (and I'm not a particularly sentimental person - typical, methinks, for INTPs) - I remember hacking away in my parent's basement, having the time of my life. It makes me all misty-eyed just thinking about it. Kinda like looking through all my old RPGs. Seeing that D&D box set reminds me of some good times, and I miss them.

Then I realize that I actually get laid now, and that brief moment of sadness for a childhood lost goes away for awhile.

What are you, a sociopath?

Sales started to drop off

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2004, pushed hard by rivaling C64 open source alternatives .. the owners of GEOS have finally decided to release GEOS to the public.

This makes it sound like in late 2003, sales started to drop off.

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[PhiltheeG]

I owned a copy of geoWorks Ensemble - it really was incredible having a simple, fully featured and blindingly fast windows system on a monochrome 286 computer. Windows 3.1 on a 486 couldn't touch it

I still remember being outraged at PC Magazine who knocked it because you couldn't change all the interface colors like you could in Windows. Bastards

I also had GEOS 1 and 2 for my C64. Never really used it too much.

Re: Acoustic Coupler?

[benzapp]

didn't you have to use one with modens that slow?

Re:Call me flamebait...

[beanlover]

You are not alone.

:)

DesqviewX

[nurb432]

That would be much nicer to have released. It was a full X11R5 server layerd on top of normal desqview..

Great stuff..

Re:Cool! Now bring back GEM! - ST

[Graemee]

For GEM try http://www.emulators.com/

Finally!

[Rorschach1]

After all these years, I can put that C-64 mouse to use!

If I can find it, anyway. I think it's buried in a pile of VAXen...

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[killmenow]

I was so sad when my diskettes of GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0 died. To this day, I'd be pleased to use it on my old 486. Plus I have docs written in GeoWrite I can't get to anymore that I want back.

Cracking GEOS

[orionware]

Actually the article is not very well researched.

The boot disk was cracked very easily using a sector editor. All they did was write some errors that during a copy the drive could not reproduce. All you needed to do was to edit the sector at the bit level and "write" those errors back to the disk. Voila. Cracked disk.

Cracks back in those days usually were little programs that would manually write those errors for you. Or at least that's what my program I wrote and released to the "scene" back then did :)

Ahh. The c-64 warez scene. Fire up the autodialer and let it loose on a list of phone numbers of your favorite warez bbs'es...

300 baud (and later 1200 and 2400) R0X0R3D!

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Geoworks Ensemble on an XT. It was a blazing XT that ran 12Mhz. I discovered Geoworks Ensemble when I signed up to BETA test the not-yet-online AOL. After signing on to AOL the first time, I peeked at the system running it, realized it was PCGEOS, went straight to SoftWarehouse (Now called CompUSA) and bought Ensemble. It screemed in comparison to the Windows 3.0 machines, and it came with a full aplication suite. I still have the diskettes. Thinking of re-installing them some day on an OLD PC.

Anything you can do I can do lamer

[ianscot]

Oh, yeah? Well, for my then-girlfriend's Mac Plus, I bought a thick paperback book in order to get the install disk(s?) for AOL tucked into the cover.

Yes, I paid for the privilege of getting an AOL floppy. With a big reference on how to use it. Thirty bucks, I believe.

(And it was money well-spent, until the four months' worth of service they charged me for after I quit the service about six months later. Lame bridges were burned.)

Sure, It can...

[ErnstKompressor]

The C64 can nowadays serve web pages, surf the internet, receive email, and do office chores. All the time without being hacked!

... Just not at the same time...*ducks*...

Banking: The leading edge of technology

[camusflage]

Some people are loath to buy more expensive word processors when they have one that already works

Dayum, the way you make it sound, my company should still be using C64's instead of those poor old PC's running OS/2 or simple mainframe terminals.

There is a 3270 emulator available for the C64, right?

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Logo

Oh come on...

[dspyder]

I'm normally the one defending the "because they can" comments, but come on....

What on earth is the point? Aren't those systems pretty well fully-emulated in software these days? Is there anything worthwhile they can do that can't be done on a slightly-advanced calculator these days?

And yes, I do own a few authentic arcade games and cabinets as well as a MAME cab... so I get the whole "authentic hardware" line... but come on....

--D

GEOS ROCKS ! - Gotta Port for Mac Dual G5?

[Anonymous Coward]

Recompiled for a Dual 2GHz machine - Geos should really rock! :-)

I bet it's easier than Linux...

[superangrybrit]

to install and add applications. Sad but true.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

TV sound -> 15.xxxKHz 'whine' from the flyback. It's worse when there's no video signal because by then there's no audio either.... So you hear it. More modern display devices like CRTs with refresh rates > 20KHz , you can't hear that.
'Warmth' of tube audio-> pleasing distortion.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

you are right about mods, i shouldn't have prodded you.

and i'll remember that.

but on the topic of the story, you were wrong. the story, while a little lite, is worthy of slashdot.

Oh wow, my dad bought this back in the days

[Zed2K]

And I never knew what it was or even why he wasted money on it. What a blast from the past.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[jdavidb]

Thanks! I'm glad to hear more about this, particularly from the point of view of technical folks who can explain it.

Re:Call me flamebait...

[infochuck]

Logo

Yes! That's it! Thank you, sir, madam, or troll!

Why would you want to develop for 286 laptops?

[FatSean]

I mean, really....

What about GEOS 128?

[Anonymous Coward]

GEOS was neat on the C64, but it really shone on the C128, with the higher resolution and 128K in the machine to get 640k with the 512k expansion (of course the ram 'expansion' was just used as a solid state drive).
On the 128, you had a dual display machine, too. Wow. The 128D and DCR had a detachable keyboard and integrated 1571 drive.
Yeah, I think I'd like to get GEOS128.

GEOS could not multitask

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember using GEOS once or twice in the early nineties, because it came with my C64C. I loaded up GEOS, then when I loaded up a game, I could not get back to GEOS without turning the machine off, rebooting, and then loading GEOS again. Without being able to multitask, GEOS was worthless to me!!! If I wanted to use a program, why would I turn the machine on, load GEOS, then load the program, when I could just turn the machine on and load the program. GEOS was just a completely unnecessary extra step, unless you wanted to play with the GEOS paint program or one of the little utilities.

Re:GEOWrite

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be able to open them with the demo version of the latest Breadbox Ensemble as it is known today.

GEOS for Apple ][ is available for download too...

[Threed1357]

Didn't see info this posted yet.. Have a look see at: http://www.breadbox.com/downloads.asp?category=App leGEOS&maincategory=AppleGEOS Breadbox has been given permission to disseminate the original AppleGEOS for no charge as a download. Enjoy the walk down memory lane!

Coincidentally....

[dcigary]

....I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car in the parking lot today that said:

LOAD "*",8,1

I giggled most of the way home over that one...

GEOS was an excellent WIMP introduction

[wintermute1974]

GEOS was really a mind-altering product for Commodore 8-bit users like myself.

Before GEOS, I assumed that all computers were like my Commodore 128. You turned it on, and there was the lovely flashing cursor beneath the lines of text indicating that Microsoft Basic was READY for your typed input.

I bought my copy of GEOS at the World of Commodore tradeshow that happened the first weekend of every December by the International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The press (Commodore Computes!, Commodore Magazine, and RUN Magazine spring to mind) had been talking about this revolutionary new product for months, and it was with great excitement when I found it at the show.

I actually read the GEOS manual cover to cover the morning after I brought it home, and was amazed by the concepts: Windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointer! The novelty of it all! And all those graphical programs with a consistent look and feel! GeoWrite, GeoPaint, and all the add-on packages that ultimately were available from Berkeley Softworks. This Graphical Environment Operating System was truly remarkable.

Having read about computer history, I now realize that these concepts had long been explored by the likes of Doug Engelbart (the father of the oNLine System) and then by those lucky designers at Xerox PARC when it first opened in the early 1970s.

But for me, it was GEOS for the Commodore 64 which was my introduction to the GUI interface which was ultimately to take the world by storm. Even though I sold my Commodore 128 long ago, that first GEOS manual still sits proudly on my bookshelf.

Re:Cool! Now bring back GEM! - ST

[csoto]

I totally forgot that Atari used a later version of GEM for the ST! That's great. Thanks for the link!

Please Create a Torrent

[wintermute1974]

If you were lucky enough to download the files before the website started saying "Sorry - The download site is temporarily unavailable due to the slashdot effect" please post a torrent of the file somewhere in this discussion. I imagine you'd make a lot of people very happy.

Geoworks

[MerlTurkin]

Wow, I used to run this years ago! Ran it for a few years. I loved it at the time. I may still have some discs laying around too. Man, memories!

Re:we know [Microsoft's] marketing strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Marketing" is having an original idea and developing an original product to fill a new need/want.
Microsoft has a "Merchandising" department where they steal other people's ideas and figure out how to make money from them.

gewg_

Re:pioneer in unimaginative names

[Anonymous Coward]

Being able to tell that apps are parts of a suite--novel!
If you plug GeoWrite into Google you get unambiguous results.
Try that with Windows, Write, Notepad, Paint, Word...

gewg_

Re:geoworks ensemble kicked ass

[Art Tatum]

another odd footnote: AOL's first client for the PC was written as a geoworks ensemble 1.0 application.

I remember this! My dad got a copy of an AOL disk from work when I was a kid (must have been about 10 at the time) and we were going to install it on our home computer. Then we found that we had to have GEOS, so we installed that too. I remember being incredibly shocked by the cool look of the GUI, after seeing only Windows and DOS. Good times!

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

The explanation from someone I would believe was that it had something to do with one of the flyback coils in the system, some of the internal wiring being loose (the wires in these coils could be glued together with epoxy), so a resonant frequency could be created that some people could hear.

I can hear it on bad TVs/CRTs, but most TVs these days aren't bad, or in service long enough to become bad, or I'm old enough that I've lost that part of my hearing.

For the most part, it can be explained as a very high-pitched "presense", or pressure, that can definitely get worse the "louder" it gets, and for TVs, it definitely changed depending on what was being displayed. Mostly white-filled screens seemed to always be the worst for me, at times being akin to the dentist getting too close to the nerve when drilling on your tooth or not having used enough novocaine. It's there, and then IT'S FUCKING TURN IT THE HELL OFF THERE!!! there, and change of scene, it's mostly gone again. It would also change frequencies as well depending on the color mix...

And, yes, some Z19's were pretty bad, and to be avoided, in college.

But it didn't seem to bother the dogs, either...

No, I have never been suggested to have ADHD ('twas not a "disease" when I was in grade school anyways, but I've never complained about this problem after that, either. I guess I haven't had to think about it for a long time that maybe I don't "have" it anymore).

Re:Call me flamebait...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Warmth of sound" could be as much as the paper cone speakers and large hard wood speaker cabinets as well, not MDF or plastic. Plus, microphones and transmission equipment is different as well.

Around here (suburb north of Perth, WestOz)...

[leonbrooks]

...you don't have to keep up with any Commodores, they're too busy doing "circle work" to race. Or being stolen. Or both.

For the furriners, the original Holden Commodore design was originally an Opel (also Vauxhall in the UK and Chevrolet in RSA).

Not long (year or two) after they came out, a local newspaper (The Sunday Times) ran a radio ad (!) touting the quality of their transcription, in which a dude tries to sell his Commodore and gets it listed as a commode (which his friend informs him is "a kind of a toilet"), and within weeks I heard a send-up of it on a different radio station in which the advertiser is trying to sell his toilet and gets it mis-labelled as a Commodore (which his friend informs him is "a kind of a car").

They also have a reputation for being easy to steal, in case you hadn't guessed from my first par. (-:

enough to buckle server via /. effect (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

enough hitting the site to buckle the download server via the slashdot effect, according to the homepage.

Anyone got it to work ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so I've downloaded Wraptor and managed to de-archive G6441.WR3 (C-64 + 1541 boot files) to a .d64 image. Everything checked out ok CRC-wise.

I've tried booting up in both WinVICE 1.14 and CCS64, but instead of booting GEOS after my 'LOAD "GEOS",8,1', I only get is 'READY.' Tried typing run (although I can't remember having to do that to get it going), but all I get is 'READY.' again.

Anyone had success in dearchiving the thing ?