David's Computer Blog

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!