GEOS Available for Download After 18 Years 471
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.
And I have found (Score:2, Interesting)
GEOS Nostalgia (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
bastards... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
GEOS is still around. (Score:5, Interesting)
interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Same company, different codebase... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Emulator (Score:5, Interesting)
AOL (Score:5, Interesting)
I was also on the beta team for AOL for Windows 1.0.
Damn I'm lame.
Re:ah, the oldskool memories... (Score:2, Interesting)
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:lemme see if i remember... (Score:2, Interesting)
new deal office (Score:4, Interesting)
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:bastards... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What is everyone asleep? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:lemme see if i remember... (Score:5, Interesting)
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:and how do I use it? (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Not So Nostalgia (Score:5, Interesting)
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:geoworks ensemble kicked ass (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Define Horde (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
DesqView 386 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is everyone asleep? (Score:2, Interesting)
--
Re:Geoworks? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:interesting stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
My memories of GEOS (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Copy Protection (Score:4, Interesting)
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:and how do I use it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Geoworks Ensemble? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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
Unfortunately,
Don't forget Xerox Star in 1981 (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Emulator (Score:4, Interesting)
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
GEOS 128 was a killer app (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
AOL on GEOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazing... reminders of the Amstrad Mouse (Score:2, Interesting)
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:DesqView 386 (Score:3, Interesting)
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!'
You say that, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cool (Score:3, Interesting)
"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.