On the Amstrad CPC many efforts to build a decent GUI were made as well. In most cases they were just extensions to realize a WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointers) environment but weren't true operating systems with their own kernel, memory-management and so on. The [[CEUS Desktop 2.0|CEUS Desktop 2.0 (1990)]] by Prodatron was just such an extension-system.
Therefore, the CPC's own OS (in combination with AmsDOS) and [[CP/M|CP/M]] (plus) were the only two known OSes for the series, but the question remained: since most CPCs have 128K (most C64 only have 64K), a screen-resolution of 320x200 with 4 colours (C64 only has 2 colours for each 8x8 area in 320x200) and some more advantages, why not have something similar? So the SymbOS-Project was born. SymbOS stands for "SYmbiosis Multitasking Based Operating System". SymbOS is a demonstration of what has been achieved on the CPC: real preemptive multitasking, dynamic memory-management for up to 1024K and a totaly MS-Windows-like GUI are the three most important features.
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