I want to write one music program (never a tracker!!!!) for MicroCabin driver how I said some weeks ago. I designed one program for this with warau help last summer, but I stoped when I didn't find some acceptable windows toolkit in MSX, and began to developing one was messy for me (I haven't time now for coding in my dear MSX ). So when I saw SymbOS was answer for my problem (I always can develop something in PC, but when you want hear result you need to copy to one dsk and use a emulator which is crappy because music emulator is far to be all acuaracy needed for this, or copy to real MSX that is a bit slow).

MicroCabbin driver use PSG and FM-PAC, so I could do a portable version where CPC people only use the PSG part, but PSG part of the driver is only one complement to the FM. In order to develop portable music applications it's necessary either a PSG API or a unique function which answer with IO base of PSG and a way to lock PSG to other applications.

In other side, Trebmit how hard could be a linux version of SymStudio? I had test with wine and I have some problems in some parts of SymStudio (if someone get a perfect emulation please say me how!!!!).

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In other side, Trebmit how hard could be a linux version of SymStudio? I had test with wine and I have some problems in some parts of SymStudio (if someone get a perfect emulation please say me how!!!!).

K0ga, in the middle, (if you have resources => MEMORY) you can download VMWARE WorkStation or Player that allow you to virtualize almost any S.O. in another. The sw works by hosting a virtual pc in your preferred S.O. (Linux or Windows) so you can have this combinatons for examples:

With Windows as the main O.S. :

a virtual linux machine (I've seen Fedora Linux)
a virtual windows 98 machine
a virtual DOS machine.

With Linux as the main O.S.:
another linux machine !
a windows machine
.....

For example we are currently running a heavy windows 2003 enterprise edition as a virtual machine under Linux

go to http://www.wmvare.com/

and see.

vmware virtualize also network adapters, so you can have the host machine comunicating with the client.
vmware also has a feature called shared folders to do the same without boring about net configuration.

I can guarantee that unlike wine, there are no compatibility problems, the only real problem is the ram reserved to the virtual machine...

YOu can't download VMWare workstation, only VMWare player is free. And with that one you can't create new virtual machines.
I've used it a lot at work (running Windows 2000 and XP in VMWare Workstation under Linux) and I never found any compatibility problem whatsoever.

Symstudio is written in a language called blitz3d which is only windows, so it's very unlikely certainly in the short term that a linux version of symstudio will exist, but I won't say never. There will be a new version out today sometime, which may or may not run better on wine (not sure), but certainly has a number of speedups which should help.

Please do develop something for symbos even if it is machine specific. The point I was trying to make though is Symbos should be treated primarily like a cross platform OS if that's at all possible. By combining the msx, cpc and perhaps enterprise/sam coupe communities will mean more software for everyone.

Tried Blitzmax yet? that's windows/mac/linux, OO, (func.)pointers, incbin, and a whole lot more. Currently it's 2d-only, tho you can use OGL commands for 3d, but a 'friendly' 3d module like Blitz3d is in the making. There *is* however a GUI module (including an event-system).

Yes Wolf_ I'm aware of blitzmax, which I guess if symstudio will eventually evolve too for ease of conversion. TBH I'm not that impressed by it, considering I use blitz as a RAD tool, and I found Max to be almost as unwieldy as c++.

Normally I would have used Delphi or even VB for this project, but initially it was a few day project to help out prodatron. Blitz unfortunately has a number of issues that will hinder symstudio. Indeed the GUI I use (I'm actually replacing slowly) is very tied to Blitz3d and due to blitz's poor handling of 2d some parts of symstudio have been an issue to get working to speed. The editor for instance was very slow as the text handling was poor. This is fixed in the current version, although the editor is still far from finished.

If anyone is wondering what symbasic is based on however - if you combine blitz3d's syntax, and VB's object and event handling that's about it.

I use vmware in my computer (Quibus there is a not official site with Debian packages patches to lastest linux kernel),
but sometimes is not a good chance due a loss of functionality.

k0ga, I see that you still hate trackers Well, hope finally your Microcabin driver will be used. Also, it could be interesting make a "cas loader" for SymbOS to read *.CAS files in real MSX.

Yours,

Why would the .cas loader be interesting for SymbOS?

NYYRIKKI or anyone that wants the fix version of symstudio is available. This fixes the issues with the consts files that would cause crashes, plus has improvements to the editor and MSX mode 6 implemented on the form display. The only thing to note that has changed in the syntax is that FUNCTION is replaced with AFUNCTION. Function is now a Basic Keyword, and Afunction is now the same for Assembler.

Prodatron may put this up at some stage, but until then you can email me at robertbaggins "at" btinternet "dot" com

Some parts of Symbasic are built in but as yet it is far from useable, so erm don't!

Rob

About a SymbOS app, I think one that would be used by all users would be a rom loader... Of course that once the game is executed, Symbos would be gone, but it doesn't matter (at least to me). It would be cool to have a graphical version of a rom loader like Loadrom or Execrom.

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Why would the .cas loader be interesting for SymbOS?

Well, it was a "personal request" for him Last time I've been with K0ga at MadriSX, he and Martos were thinking and triying to do a cas loader for all msx. Also, in CPC there is a ROM loader for Symbos, and if you have seen Martos web: http://www.terra.es/personal3/superint/cas.htm you can find games that some people think that there were not available for MSX (Scramble Spirits, for example, which was bought by me and Sapphire), so, for me, it can be very interesting. Aslo some of those games haven't got any "disk version" or a good disk dump and fixes (for running this games in every MSX, for example).

Yours,

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...you can find games that some people think that there were not available for MSX (Scramble Spirits, for example, which was bought by me and Sapphire)...

Wow! I didn't know that Scramble Spirits was available for MSX. Was it sold in Spain and/or The Netherlands? It's a game from 1990, it's surprising that still some great games were converted from ZX to MSX at that time. You can see here an advertisement of the game (read "AVAILABLE ON C64, SPECTRUM, AMSTRAD & MSX CASSETTES Ј9.99): http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/articles/scramblespirits.htm

I bought and found in a UK shop called Retrogames. If you put "scramble spirits msx" in google, you'll find it at 1st position. I think that it was only released in UK.

Here you have more info (with photos by me)

http://www.msxposse.com/viewtopic.php?t=998

I thinks is better convert to symbOS current loaders and use it with SymCommander.