SymbOS! (http://www.symbos.de/) This really has to be the most impressive OS I've ever seen. It's a true multitasking microkernel OS with a very usable and familiar GUI running on an 8-bit computer. It supports huge hard drives (up to 128 GB), music and movie playback and it does it all on CPUs as slow as 3.5 MHz... Just imagine if coders of this quality were writing PC OSes...
Bah, who needs Linux, Windows or OS X when you have...
By all means, if you want to discuss SymbOS in this thread, pease do. However, if you want to tell everyone that you're using a different OS, please use the Official Thread.
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SymbOS does seem quite impressive from what you've said - I'm an advocate of making an operating system as lightweight as possible to allow the hardware to power the applications without being held back by the OS. It'd be interesting to see how SymbOS rates in terms of security perhaps... or inter-operability with other platforms. An OS is really only as good as what it can do. If it can't communicate well, it's not a particularly good solution for anything really!
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SymbOS does seem quite impressive from what you've said - I'm an advocate of making an operating system as lightweight as possible to allow the hardware to power the applications without being held back by the OS. It'd be interesting to see how SymbOS rates in terms of security perhaps... or inter-operability with other platforms. An OS is really only as good as what it can do. If it can't communicate well, it's not a particularly good solution for anything really!
I don't actually use it for real (no actual MSX or CPC hardware). I AM working on writing the manual for it though.
It looks essentially like Windows 3.11 mixed with Windows 9x/ME but in like 8 bit mode...
So what exactly would the benefit of this retina burning OS be?
It's interesting but I doubt it'll get anywhere.
So what exactly would the benefit of this retina burning OS be?
It's interesting but I doubt it'll get anywhere.
| Quote: |
| SymbOS was originally started as an experiment to find out, how far it is possible to implement a multitasking based operating system with a windows GUI on an 8-bit computer of 1985. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS
Looking at the screenshots, it's quite amazing they managed to do this for a processor as slow as the Z80.
Really seems quite useless now that we all have computers well past the Z80 processor - that processor is in our calculators now.
| gh0stface wrote: |
| It looks essentially like Windows 3.11 mixed with Windows 9x/ME but in like 8 bit mode...
So what exactly would the benefit of this retina burning OS be? It's interesting but I doubt it'll get anywhere. |
Any OS that uses VESA with a CRT monitor will make you feel like it's burning your retinas at its weak refresh rate. I personally would not care about the GUI inteface. I've seen worse - AmigaOS, and Windows 1.0 for example(although they are still completely useable).
The Z80 is actually quite heavily used in embedded devices. While the GUI may be primarily something to show off, the actual multitasking microkernel could be quite useful in an embedded context.
Also, I hardly consider it retina-burning. t actually looks quite good, especially if you change the default pallete.
Also, I hardly consider it retina-burning. t actually looks quite good, especially if you change the default pallete.
don't you have money to buy a new computer 
...at least a P2 then...
Why spend all that effort to take a couple of steps backwards (more than a couple of steps actually)? The cost of hardware has come down so much and the processing power of modern chips are getting more and more advanced everyday. whats the point to using, and developing for old legacy hardware? is this just a proof-of-concept project?
...its great that some can do that and all...but why would I use something of inferior graphics quality when I could just keep using linux and have a 1280x800 and 1024x768 res with out any problems...its not like you are going to ever go "gee...I have this 3.5mhz computer and I need an os for it" maybe like 10 years ago someone would have done that but today if you don't have a computer that is at LEAST 500mhz you are basically SOL.
I think this is suite for embedded system. It is not for common user, so It will not take effect of windows , Mac os, Unix and linux based system. But, I like to have a test of this system. 
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