Frank OS (an RP2350 Operating System)

This looks like it could be an interesting project to port to PicoCalc, if someone was familiar enough with FreeRTOS to be able to adapt the DVI video output code to the PicoCalc display. The keyboard, SD storage, and audio would also need to be adapted as well, and some sort of mouse emulation using the keyboard. Not sure if the PSRAM in the PicoCalc could be used.

I’m not sure a graphical OS like this would be suited to the PicoCalc anyway, but the uMac emulator shows that it’s at least possible to do some things with a GUI using the PicoCalc screen and keyboard, so a native OS built to do the same could have some uses too. At the very least it would be a cool little novelty, and provide a “Windows-sque” alternative to uMac. This already includes a surprising number of applications: PShell and various linux tools, notepad, 3 games, a ZX SPectrum emulator, a MP3 player, and even a GUI version of MMBasic!

The main dependency here is the RP2350, which a Pico2 or Pico2W (or the other variants with more RAM, etc.) should meet. Since it’s only been on GitHub for about a month, there’s a chance that if this becomes popular more applications will be made for it, and it will continue to get fixes and maybe new features. Might be a neat little development environment too, since it already has a text editor (notepad, vi), and a C compiler (cc), as well as MMBasic.

This also doesn’t seem to include networking support, but that may not be possible with all they’ve got packed into this thing already. (One core is running FreeRTOS and the other is handling the display.)

I don’t have the free time or knowledge to attempt to port this, but maybe someone in the community does.

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