David's Computer Blog

Reviving the Classics: An Introduction to Commodore OS Vision 2 and the C64x I have already written a few articles about Commodore OS Vision v2, but thought I'd give it a more formal introduction here. In the ever-evolving world of technology, few names evoke as much nostalgia and admiration as Commodore. The iconic Commodore 64, with its distinctive design and groundbreaking capabilities, holds a special place in the hearts of many who experienced the dawn of personal computing. Today, the legacy of Commodore is being revived with the introduction of  Commodore OS Vision 2  and the  C64x , a modern homage to the classic C64. A Journey Through Time The original Commodore 64, launched in 1982, revolutionized the home computer market. It offered an affordable yet powerful computing experience, making it accessible to a wide audience. With its robust hardware, versatile software library, and vibrant community, the C64 became a cultural phenomenon, selling millions of units ...

So back in 2014 I started coding in BlitzResearch's Monkey-X programming language. It was, to me, the next iteration of BlitzMax that allowed more web development and commands into the Blitzbasic programming language. Monkey-X did not have the GUI elements that BlitzMax had, but it did have more web-friendly commands.  Around 2014 I ported an older version of my game " Astrocrunch " from AmigaOS into the Monkey-X language. Technically it was more than a mere port and more of a complete rewrite as Monkey-X was Object Oriented while Blitzbasic on AmigaOS was Procedural. It took me a few months to get it working, but in time, the game, renamed to " GermBlaster, " was completed. Monkey-X allowed for a game to be published as a Windows Desktop app or as an HTML5 web-app that could be run on a website. You can still play the older version (1.0) of GermBlaster online here .  GermBlaster is a casual game and not meant or designed to be anything spectacular.  You can dow...

BlitzMax is a strongly-typed, garbage-collected, open-source programming language with built-in support for advanced 2D graphics, sound, unicode and is ideally suited to making all kinds of apps and games. BlitzMax was discontinued several years ago by Blitz Research , but it was open sourced and is now freely available . BlitzMax primarily targets the main three desktop platforms - Windows, Linux and macOS - but also supports building native binaries for Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi and NX (Switch homebrew). Back in the day, the Commodore Amiga was the initial platform for the BlitzBasic programming language. BlitzMax is a newer version and has continued its development since those early days of BlitzBasic on the Commodore Amiga.  Creating a Command Line or Terminal app is as simple as:   Print "Hello, World" And creating a Graphics app is almost as simple with the following code: SuperStrict Graphics 640,480 Repeat     DrawText "Hello, Commodore OS Vision Worl...

I did a compile test of simple SDL code, which is listed at the end of this blog entry, to see what would happen. I had already discovered that gcc was installed by default.  For this SDL code compiling test, I was compiling with libsdl version 1.2, which is older, I know. The initial compile failed as it couldn't find the SDL.h header file. So SDL is not installed by default in Commodore OS Vision 2. It's not a big deal, but it is good to know.  I queried the apt-get cache and discovered sdl1.2-dev, sdlnet1.2-dev, and sdlimage1.2 were available. However, I could not find sdl_ttf1.2-dev, so that's still an outstanding issue. Since sdl_ttf 1.2 is not available for some reason, I had to comment out the include file for it and remove the "-lsdlttf" option from the compile command.  After this, the program did compile and run successfully.  Nothing fancy about this program as all it is meant to do is test for include and runtime files, start a loop, then end when the ...

I'm experimenting with trying to run the Commodore OS Vision 2 system on different computers.  I work in IT, so I have access to various computers. Mostly Dell computers since that's the standard where I work.  For the first test, I tried the Commodore OS Vision 2 bootable ISO on a Dell Latitude 5511 BTX Intel i7 32GB RAM laptop. The OS detected the Ethernet connection and allowed me to access the Internet with no issues. I haven't figured out the Wifi yet, so that's a work in progress. I managed to use Bluetooth and connect a wireless Dell WL5022 headset (in the image above it's shown on the left side of the screen). It was successfully tested with YouTube audio and local audio testing as well. The integrated speakers worked as well. I used it as a mobile music station listening to music while I moved around working on setting up computers and such. This laptop does not have a DVD drive, so that was not tested.  Overall the OS is very responsive on the laptop. I on...

Commodore OS Vision 2 in Hyper-V Apparently, I somehow missed the release of the new version of Commodore OS Vision! Version 2 was released back in December 2023, but I apparently missed it. I've been hoping someone would take up the project again from when it ended back when CommodoreUSA closed business. Luckily for fans of the OS, it's back. Here is a screenshot of my Hyper-V settings used to successfully run the ISO and install Commodore OS Vision 2: Of note is in Security disable Secure boot and number of processors changed from default to 2. I also disabled Checkpoints as a personal preference.  Installing Commodore OS Vision 2 was pretty straight-forward. Download the ISO file from here . Create a blank HDD (mine was 25GB). Mount the ISO file in the VM, then boot the VM. It boots from the ISO, then start and run the Installer in Commodore OS Vision.  More Screenshots: Happy computing!

First test for HaikuOS Beta 4 using NetPositive to compose this blog entry.  Basic text. Not much luck with graphics in Blogger here. The Copy-Paste within WebPositive into the typing textform does not work. At all. So that's a bummer. Copy-Paste works in other areas of WebPositive but just not into the Blogger article textbox. Content can be copied from the textbox into other text areas but not even to another area of the textbox. Weird. Gotta figure out why. I did manage to insert an image! The Haiku Beta 4 download image. So that's a step in the right direction in using HaikuOS and WebPositive to create blog articles using web pages and CMS webpages. 

So in a previous article I mentioned installing OpenBSD into Hyper-V. I had encountered a problem with disk space while trying to install packages. A partition the size of 20GB and 30GB was too small for the auto-partition feature of the OpenBSD installer. Gnome and Firefox took too much space for the auto-partition feature. In fixing the space issue, I thought about possibly redoing the OpenBSD installation and use manual partitioning in order to have more space. It worked. The auto-installer creates 9 partitions for OpenBSD. There is the root partition along with tmp, var, usr, usr/X11R6, usr/local, usr/src, usr/obj, and /home. So I deleted all these non-root partitions. I then had to delete the SWAP partition as it was preventing the root partition from being resized. I resized partition A to 95% of the 30GB disk and created a new SWAP partition that used the remaining 5% of the drive.  This arrangement probably isn't ideal for a production or a long-term setup, but it works we...

So I wanted to try out the  new FreeBSD 13.1. Rather than installing it onto a physical computer, I decided to try creating a virtual machine in Hyper-V.  Hyper-V is a Microsoft product, and it was all I am able to use in the work environment that I am in. In a previous experiment I was able to create a Linux Mint virtual machine in Hyper-V with no problems.  However, I did encounter problems setting up FreeBSD 13.1 in Hyper-V. I eventually gave-up on getting FreeBSD 13.1 to work in Hyper-V. I tried a few different ideas, but I was never able to get X-Windows to recognize the keyboard. The keyboard worked fine to type in startx, but once X started, the keyboard wouldn't work.  It was a little disappointing not being able to get FreeBSD working in Hyper-V, but alas, some times such things happen. To stay within the BSD family, I decided to try out OpenBSD. I had very little knowledge of OpenBSD, but I decided to get it a try in Hyper-V. Unlike FreeBSD 13.1, X Windows...