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.
cool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cool (Score:5, Funny)
You say that, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cool (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (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
What the hell...? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the hell...? (Score:5, Funny)
Pushed hard? (Score:5, Funny)
Great Timing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great Timing (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great Timing (Score:5, Funny)
Flamin' soviets...
Re:Great Timing (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Define Horde (Score:5, Funny)
Watch out, I hope their web servers will be capable of handling all 23 downloaders.
Re:Define Horde (Score:5, Funny)
23 downloaders, each with 1200 baud C-1670 modems...This site will be Slashdotted for sure.
Re:Define Horde (Score:5, Funny)
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 (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.
Re:Define Horde (Score:3, Funny)
And I have found (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, 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.
Re:bastards... (Score:3, Interesting)
and how do I use it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
(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? (Score:5, Informative)
http://sta.c64.org/xcables.html [c64.org].
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? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:and how do I use it? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:and how do I use it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:and how do I use it? (Score:5, Informative)
Head alignment (Score:5, Informative)
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,
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.
Re:and how do I use it? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:3, Funny)
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...
GEOS for DOS (Score:2)
Re:GEOS for DOS (Score:5, Informative)
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?cate
GEOS is still around. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GEOS is still around. (Score:3, Informative)
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
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.
interesting stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:interesting stuff (Score:5, Informative)
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 (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 successfu
Re:interesting stuff (Score:3, Informative)
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"?
Mac/Lisa Trash Can much earlier (Score:3, Informative)
folklore.org [folklore.org]
trash can lineages (Score:3, Informative)
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...
Geoworks? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:2)
Not that anyone is still go
AOL (Score:5, Interesting)
I was also on the beta team for AOL for Windows 1.0.
Damn I'm lame.
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 cam
lemme see if i remember... (Score:5, Funny)
POKE "SCO","SHARP STICK"
ahhh yes...
Re:lemme see if i remember... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:lemme see if i remember... (Score:2)
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
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:lemme see if i remember... (Score:5, Informative)
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
ah, the oldskool memories... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ah, the oldskool memories... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Emulator (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Emulator (Score:5, Informative)
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 (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
Apple II Version was released 6 months ago. (Score:5, Informative)
Brings back memories (Score:2)
The cost... (Score:3, Funny)
Does that makes the TCO (total cost of ownership) more than Linux?
Ahhh...takes me back... (Score:2)
My dad never let me touch his sacred GEOS version 2.0 disks for that reason - that and his SX 64.
Looks like... (Score:2, Funny)
That's what you get when you actually host a website on a C64 running Contiki...
Re:Looks like... (Score:5, Funny)
LOAD"GETGEOSPROGRAM",8,1
And got
LOADING "GETGEOSPROGRAM"
SORRY WE'RE SLASHDOTTED ERROR
READY.
Heh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Heh.. (Score:2)
Re:Heh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 memor
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:new deal office (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
so sad (Score:2, Funny)
Pron looked crap (Score:2)
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.
Funny C64 Disk Drive Engineering (Score:3, Funny)
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. Th
8 bit or 64 bit? (Score:3, Funny)
8-bit? It's supposed to be 64-bit as I can tell reading the name c64. Otherwise, why is it c64?
DesqView 386 (Score:5, Interesting)
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!'
GEOS for DOS....and AOL! (Score:3, Informative)
This was just around the time that Windows 3.0 was beginning to be popular.
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...
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).
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...?
AOL on GEOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AOL on GEOS (Score:4, Informative)
Echoes of the past.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Solved my printing problems it did! (Score:3)
With Geos I could print just about any font, but boy do those dot matrix printers make a racket printing graphics!
Re:Don't laugh (Score:2)
Re:VIC 20 (Score:2)
Re:What is everyone asleep? (Score:4, Funny)
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:How's the bandwidth in Afghanistan these days? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sounds cool (Score:3, Informative)
Well, if you want GS/OS, you can still get it [apple.com].
Re:Sounds cool (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Any cool programs or archives on Apple IIGS GS/ (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Call me flamebait... (Score:5, Insightful)
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".