It would indeed be amazing news! I wish you all the look in porting SymbOS to MSX... I for one am looking forward to the first sneak previews!

MSX has limited capacity. If a significant part of this capacity is used by the OS, then the applications would only be able to use a limited amount of CPU time and memory. Do we want this?

Usually not. So, as 'OS' I doubt it would be popular, but a GUI for programming visual applications would be handy I think (for novice programmers) ..

Actually, Pitpan, MSX can handle 4MB ram....

Still it would be nice to see, what (perhaps yet?) unseen capabilities be digged out of our MSX!

I don't think it's a waste of time, there's just so much to explore and learn.
And why not taking a MSX as a platform?

Nope. Actually the MSX cannot handle 4 MB. It can only handle 64 KB and interact with some memory swapping devices. Therefore, some part of the OS and some parth of the application *MUST* share those 64 KB. Memory swapping introduces further delays.

Of course, the video looks gorgeous. But what else can we do? I prefer no multitasking and pure 100% dedicated applications.

But talking about games, 99,99% of them don't return to the caller so they don't need to share CPU time. Of course every time we want to return to the OS, a reset is needed; but using some persistent swapping device (aka disk ) then previous status could be (slowly) restored. If we're talking about apps, no one is so much time consuming (a MSX is a slow machine after all) that CPU time sharing could impact seriously its performance (of course disk I/O is always a killer...). Anyway, I'm not an OS guru, so....
Btw, where's Flyguille?

Quote:

Nope. Actually the MSX cannot handle 4 MB. It can only handle 64 KB and interact with some memory swapping devices. Therefore, some part of the OS and some parth of the application *MUST* share those 64 KB. Memory swapping introduces further delays.

Since the Amstrad CPC is also a Z80 based machine, I guess that the same limitation applies to it.

Check this url. It shows some GUIs for many different computer systems.

http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html

I saw at BCN PARTY a preview (not a beta!) of Symbos and it worked great and fast. This was not the actual version of Symbos, but when I saw it I said: this MUST be under my MSX. Actually, is MSX or MSX-DOS which can handle only 64 KB RAM? But if a CPC can do it, why not a MSX? Remember that old MS-DOS for PC only handled 640 KB RAM and the rest was EMS or XMS memory.

Karloch is right: CPC is also a Z80 based machine.

Also remember: Symbos has his OWN apps, which you can FREELY code, as there is a IDE called Symstudio. This apps are optimised for this new OS and features. Now we are not talking about the old MSX-DOS and simple gui for it. We are talking about a new, fast and great OS. It's like MS-DOS, Windows XP, Linux, Zeta OS or QNX: different systems for different tastes. For me, use Symbos in my MSX will be totally great.

For me, MSX is not a past machine: is a present machine. And now, it can be time for a graphical OS. And as PC systems: if you don't want to use it, don't use it

Yours,

* REAL MULTITASKING * 576KB DYNAMIC MEMORY *
* 128GB FILESYSTEM * 100% WINDOWS GUI *

This are the specs of SymbOS, so it can handle 576 KB of Dynamic memory with a Maximum Core size of 63 KB.

Here is a screenshoot:



http://www.symbos.de/facts.htm This is the technical description of SymbOS. Have you read that?

Yours,

There is a clear difference between "modern and old" computers. Of course a MSX can't compete with a PC! Btw, that's not the goal.
And yes, a neat designed and coded OS is just a developer's showcase "without a real use", nothing more. Especially when there aren't many apps for it.

Of course we don't expect the new OS to be capable of running (e.g.) Xak and Illusion City simultaneously.
But still, it's the curiosity - whether a MSX is capable of running a (small) multitasking OS like SynbOS! Well I am certainly wondering...
And if someone is willing to give it a try, then why not?

Does anyone know whether Operasoft's Ease is kinda 'open' for developers? As in: can we create Ease applications using its GUI?

Wolf: Actually, EASE has it's own API, but it docs weren't released and there no IDE for coding EASE apps

Sousuke, the use you can do to Symbos or a new OS is the use you want to do to it. And it can be a new and interesting platform for coding: SymStudio is amazing ^^