Introducing Your Commander X16 Personal Computer (brief intro)

[voidstar]

From Kevin's 1-page "here's the X16" quickstart letter included in "the 100" to an in depth 500-page technical reference, we're still trying to find the right balance on manuals.

Here is my 20-page offering, focused more on having a Gen1 physical system in your hands, and for those who have been away from putting together a system like this for a long time and need a brief refresher.


UPDATED FOR R45 (what the "1000 units" batch will be launched with):
https://github.com/voidstar78/X16_MANUA ... T_REV9.pdf



It's not a lengthy hand-holding step by step manual, like many of the original Commodore, Tandy, and Apple manuals used to be. But it is also kept brief for cost reasons: if someone wants an actual printed manual to go with the system, then just 20 pages is still going to cost $5 - $10 (using actual "book like" thick glossy paper).

If any official manual were to be decided, then a decision has to be made on who prints it: with the case or with the mainboard? or a third party altogether and offers the two together as a single package? We're still aways from that as we test the waters on the overall interest in the system (or which configurations are preferred).

One suggestion has been that a printed manual can probably be under 10 pages (and with no need to include any programming examples). Other suggestions are to commit to a more verbose ~50 page manual (such as describing each available BASIC command). Others still desire a complete 500-page technical manual on every facet of the system, such as descriptions of the memory map and each opcode.

Anyhow, this little document is just a "Fan Inspired Manual" to anyone interested. I'll have notes on how I had it printed available soon, and how it turned out. I printed it in a 7" format, but the overall format was inspired by the Tandy Color Computer original 10" introductory manual.

[jhames]

Thanks for posting this. it is a good start on using the X16.

[Gerry]

Great intro to the Commander X16 personal computer. If I may suggest, I'm trying to figure out how the AUTOBOOT.X16 and the AUTOEXEC.X16 files work. I've experimented a bit with the boot file when making changes through the Menu option. But when I rebooted the X16, the x16 boot screen header disappeared and all I saw was READY. I had to delete that file and the header returned.

If you could add information about these startup files, how they work and what can be changed that would be great. In the meantime, where can I find more details on how the the X16 starts up and my options?

Thanks again for a great startup manual,
Gerry

[ahenry3068]

Great intro to the Commander X16 personal computer. If I may suggest, I'm trying to figure out how the AUTOBOOT.X16 and the AUTOEXEC.X16 files work. I've experimented a bit with the boot file when making changes through the Menu option. But when I rebooted the X16, the x16 boot screen header disappeared and all I saw was READY. I had to delete that file and the header returned.

If you could add information about these startup files, how they work and what can be changed that would be great. In the meantime, where can I find more details on how the the X16 starts up and my options?

Thanks again for a great startup manual,
Gerry

The autoboot.x16 is simply a program file with that name. Can be tokenized Basic or a valid ML program written in a different language. If you want the Banner in your AUTOBOOT.X16 then simply have the last command in that file be BANNER

[voidstar]

Hmm, you're right, in the X16 Tech Ref the only mention of autoboot.x16 I see is in the description of the "BOOT" command in the BASIC keywords.

https://github.com/X16Community/x16-doc ... IC.md#boot

That command is briefly covered in page 4 of the standard X16 manual that came with the system.


One note, in the X16-docs description, it says DEVICE 8 - I wonder if you do a "DOS 9" command, if it would look for autoboot.x16 off the current device and not just device 8. But aside from that, it doesn't elaborate very much - for example, not everyone even knows what a PRG file.

I think of the BOOT command as a macro for the following two commands:
LOAD "AUTOBOOT.X16" (unsure if it actually does ,8 or not)
RUN

So AUTOBOOT.X16 can be any PRG file that can be applied to the LOAD command - which can be a "regular" machine-code program or a (tokenized) BASIC program. Many might not know what tokenized-BASIC mean - it just means you can't use EDIT to modify the autoboot.x16 in plain-text.

In the MENU, yes, a few folks have accidentally overwritten the stock SD card autoboot.x16 file - it can be recovered by some startup-setting tools in the Launcher.

I don't think there is an AUTOEXEC.X16 ??

On startup, I think of the system as automatically invoking a "BOOT" command if an autoboot.x16 file is found in the root of the SD card. If there is an issue with your autoboot.x16 file that gets the startup sequence "stuck", then just remove the SD card, boot with the default startup, then re-insert the SD card to fix the autoboot.x16 content.

And BOOT applies to the "current directory" - so you can have a different autoboot.x16 in any sub-folder to quickly just startup whatever is in that folder.

[Gerry]

I apologize for my rudimentary question. What kind of program file is AUTOBOOT.X16? I'm thinking you mean like the Config.sys or Autoexec.bat files from the IBM PC DOS world. Is the AUTOBOOT.X16 a text or bat file that when added to the root directory of the SD Card, will run the listed commands?

The closest experience I've had is the Apple II and IBM worlds so I'm trying to tie together what you're explaining to what I know. That's why I was looking for documentation on the AUTOBOOT.X16 file.

Thanks for the clarification,
Gerry

[TomXP411]

I apologize for my rudimentary question. What kind of program file is AUTOBOOT.X16? I'm thinking you mean like the Config.sys or Autoexec.bat files from the IBM PC DOS world. Is the AUTOBOOT.X16 a text or bat file that when added to the root directory of the SD Card, will run the listed commands?

The closest experience I've had is the Apple II and IBM worlds so I'm trying to tie together what you're explaining to what I know. That's why I was looking for documentation on the AUTOBOOT.X16 file.

Thanks for the clarification,
Gerry

It's just a BASIC program (or a machine language program with a BASIC stub.) There is otherwise nothing special about it.

[Gerry]

Thanks Voidstar,

That gives me a start on trying to figure out how to do what I want. Specifically, as I've searched this site for information on AUTOBOOT.X16, A consistent suggestion I've seen is renaming the program you want to run "AUTOBOOT.X16" so it will run at the end of the boot process. My interest is to set a default path, and have FM.prg run on startup, as it helps me navigate and run the demo applications as I see what the Commander X16 can do (I'm just learning how to get around the X16 environment). I come from the hardware world before uProccessors were used commercially. As a side note, look up the Ampex AVR-1 (or ACR-25) video tape recorder (yes, I'm old. I should be retired but I'm working at Fox4 in Dallas and loving it) Also, my first calculator was an HP-55 that had 50 steps for programming. I cut my teeth on the AVR-1 in the Air Force and it had no uProcs, it was all done by discrete TTL logic. An amazing machine for its time.

I bought this first generation X16 proto-board to learn how to program and having such simple hardware I think is perfect for me. As I was initially trained on hardware (my strength) and software now controls the world (my weakness), I'm hoping the Commander X16 is the 'bridge' to explore and build from my strengths to improve my weaknesses. As another example of my professional trek through electronics in the Broadcast world, the Kaleidoscope, built by Grass Valley (GVG), back in the 80's had a 68020 on every board in the chassis and all the electronics were generic with GVG's software configuring every card as it processed (analog, SD) video. Another amazing piece of hardware.

So perhaps my question should be 'How do I configure the X16 to set up my own startup parameters, variables, paths and applications to run at boot up. That's why I think of AUTOBOOT.X16 as a batch file for custom user configuration. Is that possible?

Thanks for listening to a 'senior citizen' ramble,
Gerry

[voidstar]

Neat background info, thanks for sharing. The history of digital "video editing" has been fascinating to me - I recently came across an advertisement showing video-camera input supported by the Z80-based NEC-8001 in around 1980 - many years before the Amiga Toaster (but obviously a much more primitive overall capability). I also came across a system called the Interact Home Computer - I think 8080 based, introduced somewhere north maybe Michigan, in 1978 - that from what I've read, was commonly used to just scroll text on TV's, for use as advertisements. One of my aunts worked at a TV studio - it was decades ago, but I got to visit her at work once, and got an appreciation for how they had to blend in between TV shows and commercials. At some of the VCF events throughout the year, there is often a "Weather Channel" exhibit that shows how weather update banners were broadcast.


To your question, the short answer is yes. If you're using the original Launch SD image, if you do //LAUNCH and go to SYSTEM and then SYSTEM-BOOT, you can select BOOT-FILEMANAGER and that will configure the AUTOBOOT.X16 like you need to startup with the FileManager.

I meant to do an SD-card tutorial months ago, but just never got a free weekend to prepare it properly. But the idea was to start by saying: do a LOAD "AUTOBOOT.X16" and take a look at the content of those default AUTOBOOT.X16 files (by using the LIST command), to get an idea of what you can do from BASIC.

Many might not realize you can call BASIC commands from within your own BASIC program. That is, some people think commands are distinct things, but they are parsed out and interpreted whether in immediate mode or in the runtime of a BASIC program.

But to get what you want, your BASIC program might look like this:

Code: Select all

10 LOAD "/APPS/FM/FM.PRG"

(then remember to SAVE "@:AUTOBOOT.X16" to ensure that sequence the next time you start.
(then remember to use BOOT to get your AUTOBOOT.X16 of the current folder loaded)

The path just depends on where you park the version of FM.PRG you want to try. You could even add a menu into your BASIC program, to select maybe your two favorite version of FM.PRG, or swap between FM.PRG and SHELL.PRG depending on your preference at startup.

I hope that helps a little bit to get started - I'll try a more extensive overview of AUTOBOOT.X16 later in the week. While it is really a fairly simple thing - the details of it help orient a lot of aspects about the X16 systems.

[voidstar]

For more details about the AUTOBOOT.X16, and some other X16 usage related topics, I have an evolving write up here:

https://voidstar.blog/the-commander-x16 ... explained/