Thanks for posting this. What a fun trip down memory lane. I was the founder of Berkeley Softworks. One thing that stood out in the video was your using geoPaint to create the icon, I know we had a bitmap editor utility that made it easy to design icons of specific dimensions. Was that not shipped with geoProgrammer? I know we shipped it with geoBASIC, the SDK we had for developing BASIC language apps.
The disk images that I have for geoProgrammer came on 2 disks and it included the linker, debugger , assembler, macros and symbols and a set of sample applications. The manual references to use the Icon Editor in the desk pack. The version of the Icon Editor I have is 1.1 which does not appear to let you copy to a photo scrap. For sure, there is a later version that did. I have not played with geoBASIC yet… I’ll have to track that down. I cannot say enough as to how great the documentation is. The included manual, Official GEOS Programmers Reference Guide and the comments in the sample source code are so incredibly in depth and technical and at the same time easy to read and approachable by anyone with just an elementary background in 6502 Assembly language. What an amazing team of developers and writers you had. I wish I was a bit older when this was released, I would have had so much fun writing applications and sharing them on Q-Link and BBSes in my area.
I want to thank your team for taking the risk to build this incredible product, I had moved on from the C64 but couldn't ignore what was achieved here. My personal collection of SW titles includes physical copies of both 64 and 128 form. Your line from the appearance on Computer Chronicles (1988?) that went something like "We take the approach that any computable problem can be solved on a 1-bit Turing machine." Of course we all learned this (CPSC 375 in my case) but its quite another to build a company on going 'above the net' and delivering what many would have dismissed as 'a fine academic exercise but won't result in practical product with any utility'.
Thank you for making this, and for making it look fun! I've always wondered about geoProgrammer, but was never familiar enough with GEOS to know if it'd be worth the time to learn it. Your worked examples of using these various programming tools are useful, well organized, and entertaining. ty!
Spectacular content! I believe I was aware of GEOS "back in the day," but I did not delve into its ecosystem at the time. In fact, I don't recall even hearing about geoProgrammer until this video.
There is also a tool called geoBeaver for designing menus, dialog boxes, click boxes, and screen art and exporting it as geoProgrammer source code for inclusion in your programs. I once used it to see if I could generate a useful program in a weekend. :)
Cool, I'd been interested in getting GeoProgrammer (and I had a lot of that Geos stuff) though I think it would have been difficult since I didn't have a REU or a hard drive. Good to finally get a bit more insight into what the program was like.
Have always thought it was really cool (if not totally practical) that the GEOS team chose a rich text editor like GeoWrite as the text editor of choice. :')
I had absolutely no idea this existed, and it's mind-blowing. I wonder if more people have watched this video than ever built something in it.
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I was not aware GEOS is this advanced. Especially for 1987 on a 8bit computer. I only had the base disks back then, so most of these applications never reached me. Thanks for these videos, really interesting stuff! :) Wouldn't the C128 version of GEOS be faster though? I can imagine you can use the same peripherals there. Also it can use the higher resolution of VDC for output which would elevate the GeoWrite experience a lot. I wonder if you can write C64 compatible GEOS apps on the C128 version of GEOS, probably yes.
That could theoretically create games for running directly in BASIC. It would be a buster to get back into GEOS after running. VLIR was an interesting experiment in achieving virtual memory on a 6510.
How radical it would've been using MS Word for Windows as a code editor, some 30+ years ago... or at least WordPad later on. And yet, GEOS development had it normalized much earlier. Amazing.
Loved GEOS back in the day... mid 80's? I had no idea there was a development language for it. I was busy writing apps for the Palm Pilot in the 90's and I thought that was rough.
The documentation quality is a major factor in development ease and my memory of Turbo C, for example, was that it was superb also. And Metrowerks of course. I'm going to seek these out and take a look.
Great video. Thank you. I hope you will have time and a way to extend the series to GEOS on C128 and, why not, wheels. Unfortunately we know very well that C64 emulation with supercpu is not reliable compared to the real board, and at least personally I can't get hold of a real supercpu to be able to synthesise an fpga core. Still, it would be nice to see how the C128 performs with the 80-column output. Thanks again, bravo.
The MEGA Assembler package for GEOS was more powerful and easier to use. But I think it was only available in German. GEOS was very popular in Germany, lots of GEOS upgrades are from there.
Also IF using an emulator THEN make sure to attach the CMD SuperCpu, preferably with 16 MB RamCard. You will also need the Super64 (I don't remember the name of the app) application for Geos. Because Geos isn't slow, the C64 is.
While this was pretty cool and very advanced for its time, it would have taken ages to develop a really useful application that way. I did own GEOS for the C64 and even had a mouse, but I could not really see much use in it, other than writing text and printing that on a printer... except that I never had a printer for the C64 but I had a friend who did (9 pin B&W dot matrix printer). However, as soon as I got my first PC, I'd rather use my PC for such things as it was way faster, it had a similar UI named GEM (Graphics Environment Manager from Digital Research) and I did have a printer for my PC (a 24 pin color dot matrix printer).
GEOprogrammer would have been much more usable if it were an IDE, not many distinct programs loading slowly between each of them, having to manually assemble each file.
With the memory limitations, this was going to happen no matter what -- sort of. For example, geoProgrammer was later adapted into an all-in-one interface called "Concept". It avoids loading the deskTop between assembles and links. In the end, though, it still has to load each enormous component before executing it.
Just a brief remark about parts 1&2 of the series. Did everyone notice the printer drivers list included the HP Laserwriter. Those were a $2-3K at the time, tells you how seriously BS was targeting the hobbyist and professional environment with their products.
www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/onrequest/geos/index.html#os I downloaded geoProgrammer disks from this site. This site has an amazing collection of resources for GEOS on the C64.
The architects of this GEOS were truly working beyond the platform.
GEOS is an incredible technical achievement.
Thanks for posting this. What a fun trip down memory lane. I was the founder of Berkeley Softworks. One thing that stood out in the video was your using geoPaint to create the icon, I know we had a bitmap editor utility that made it easy to design icons of specific dimensions. Was that not shipped with geoProgrammer? I know we shipped it with geoBASIC, the SDK we had for developing BASIC language apps.
The disk images that I have for geoProgrammer came on 2 disks and it included the linker, debugger , assembler, macros and symbols and a set of sample applications. The manual references to use the Icon Editor in the desk pack. The version of the Icon Editor I have is 1.1 which does not appear to let you copy to a photo scrap. For sure, there is a later version that did. I have not played with geoBASIC yet… I’ll have to track that down.
I cannot say enough as to how great the documentation is. The included manual, Official GEOS Programmers Reference Guide and the comments in the sample source code are so incredibly in depth and technical and at the same time easy to read and approachable by anyone with just an elementary background in 6502 Assembly language. What an amazing team of developers and writers you had.
I wish I was a bit older when this was released, I would have had so much fun writing applications and sharing them on Q-Link and BBSes in my area.
I want to thank your team for taking the risk to build this incredible product, I had moved on from the C64 but couldn't ignore what was achieved here. My personal collection of SW titles includes physical copies of both 64 and 128 form.
Your line from the appearance on Computer Chronicles (1988?) that went something like "We take the approach that any computable problem can be solved on a 1-bit Turing machine." Of course we all learned this (CPSC 375 in my case) but its quite another to build a company on going 'above the net' and delivering what many would have dismissed as 'a fine academic exercise but won't result in practical product with any utility'.
Thank you for making this, and for making it look fun! I've always wondered about geoProgrammer, but was never familiar enough with GEOS to know if it'd be worth the time to learn it. Your worked examples of using these various programming tools are useful, well organized, and entertaining. ty!
GEOS programming is seriously fun. Go Do It!
I had a chance to play around with GEOS on my C64 a little bit before switching over to the A1000. The GEOS developers must be from another world.
Spectacular content! I believe I was aware of GEOS "back in the day," but I did not delve into its ecosystem at the time. In fact, I don't recall even hearing about geoProgrammer until this video.
There is also a tool called geoBeaver for designing menus, dialog boxes, click boxes, and screen art and exporting it as geoProgrammer source code for inclusion in your programs. I once used it to see if I could generate a useful program in a weekend. :)
Cool, I'd been interested in getting GeoProgrammer (and I had a lot of that Geos stuff) though I think it would have been difficult since I didn't have a REU or a hard drive. Good to finally get a bit more insight into what the program was like.
Have always thought it was really cool (if not totally practical) that the GEOS team chose a rich text editor like GeoWrite as the text editor of choice. :')
I had absolutely no idea this existed, and it's mind-blowing. I wonder if more people have watched this video than ever built something in it.
I was not aware GEOS is this advanced. Especially for 1987 on a 8bit computer. I only had the base disks back then, so most of these applications never reached me. Thanks for these videos, really interesting stuff! :) Wouldn't the C128 version of GEOS be faster though? I can imagine you can use the same peripherals there. Also it can use the higher resolution of VDC for output which would elevate the GeoWrite experience a lot. I wonder if you can write C64 compatible GEOS apps on the C128 version of GEOS, probably yes.
It is definitely faster
There's a YT person called AmigaLove who did a video on a GEOS 128 powerhouse, its another good viewing.
That could theoretically create games for running directly in BASIC. It would be a buster to get back into GEOS after running. VLIR was an interesting experiment in achieving virtual memory on a 6510.
How radical it would've been using MS Word for Windows as a code editor, some 30+ years ago... or at least WordPad later on. And yet, GEOS development had it normalized much earlier. Amazing.
Great work. I always wanted to see how GP worked.
Loved GEOS back in the day... mid 80's? I had no idea there was a development language for it. I was busy writing apps for the Palm Pilot in the 90's and I thought that was rough.
Just found your channel. Great video!
Wow, that is so early Mac System Software v1.0 -like (from what I remember anyway).
The documentation quality is a major factor in development ease and my memory of Turbo C, for example, was that it was superb also. And Metrowerks of course. I'm going to seek these out and take a look.
Great video. Thank you. I hope you will have time and a way to extend the series to GEOS on C128 and, why not, wheels.
Unfortunately we know very well that C64 emulation with supercpu is not reliable compared to the real board, and at least personally I can't get hold of a real supercpu to be able to synthesise an fpga core.
Still, it would be nice to see how the C128 performs with the 80-column output.
Thanks again, bravo.
Wouldn't GEOS 128 with its 80col display also be a hardware recommendation in the beginning :)?
You sell to the larger product base first, recoup the development costs and simultaneously develop the next product. This case that was the C128 form.
The MEGA Assembler package for GEOS was more powerful and easier to use. But I think it was only available in German. GEOS was very popular in Germany, lots of GEOS upgrades are from there.
Also IF using an emulator THEN make sure to attach the CMD SuperCpu, preferably with 16 MB RamCard. You will also need the Super64 (I don't remember the name of the app) application for Geos. Because Geos isn't slow, the C64 is.
While this was pretty cool and very advanced for its time, it would have taken ages to develop a really useful application that way. I did own GEOS for the C64 and even had a mouse, but I could not really see much use in it, other than writing text and printing that on a printer... except that I never had a printer for the C64 but I had a friend who did (9 pin B&W dot matrix printer). However, as soon as I got my first PC, I'd rather use my PC for such things as it was way faster, it had a similar UI named GEM (Graphics Environment Manager from Digital Research) and I did have a printer for my PC (a 24 pin color dot matrix printer).
GEOprogrammer would have been much more usable if it were an IDE, not many distinct programs loading slowly between each of them, having to manually assemble each file.
With the memory limitations, this was going to happen no matter what -- sort of.
For example, geoProgrammer was later adapted into an all-in-one interface called "Concept". It avoids loading the deskTop between assembles and links. In the end, though, it still has to load each enormous component before executing it.
Do you think they did not know this?
you can really do a lot with an 8 bit computer. I think how much of my office could be done on 8 bits.
Just a brief remark about parts 1&2 of the series. Did everyone notice the printer drivers list included the HP Laserwriter. Those were a $2-3K at the time, tells you how seriously BS was targeting the hobbyist and professional environment with their products.
Good tutorial. Is geoProgrammer available to purchase or download anywhere? I found very little on how to actually obtain it. Thanks.
www.lyonlabs.org/commodore/onrequest/geos/index.html#os
I downloaded geoProgrammer disks from this site. This site has an amazing collection of resources for GEOS on the C64.
could one make a relational database with it?