THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE/FIRMWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
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"Home Screen" for Foenix C256.
Concept environment Source of Inspiration:
Quantum Link / PlayNET home screen:
and
and a little inspiration from Windows 8 Home Screen. Remember how Windows 8 as some striking similarity in feel.
To add further charm to the Home Screen would be that each of the 8 selection zones would be individual "icon" glyphs of simple format and a short label. Additional functions being considered would be couple arrows at the bottom of the screen space to page through different pages of selections.
Among the individual selections would be BASIC environment. Other selections maybe other programs and whatever else.
User Input devices for controlling selections:
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1. Joystick & Game Pads
2. Koala Pad (and other similar input devices)
3. Potentially Light pens with CRTs provided an appropriate HDMI to VGA converter is used and a raster display screen is used.
4. PS/2 Keyboard & Mouse
Would this be the default screen when the system boots up?
I envisioned a context switcher KERNAL routine that could be initiated by the user via a keyboard shortcut. Something that isn't quite a multitasking OS (scheduler), but would simply allow multiple programs to be loaded in RAM and let the user switch among them by some kind of bank switching or page switching scheme. (That's where the ability to install 16MB of RAM comes in.)
I don't think the 65C816 has a protected mode such that the system could prevent programs from trespassing on each other's (or the KERNAL's) memory, so it would be down to software authors to constrain their programs to stay within their allotted spaces, and to make them relocatable. That may be asking too much given the difficulty of coding for the 65C816 in native mode to begin with. Then again, a programmer who had already mastered the 816 may have no problem jumping through a few additional hoops.
Anyway, the machine would boot into the BASIC interpreter / command shell, just like any other retro computer. The user would load a program from the BASIC shell - again like any other retro computer. If he then wanted to load additional programs, he'd use the keyboard shortcut to go to the home screen and either launch another BASIC shell from which to launch the next program, or switch to another program that's already running.