TEN "CENTERS"
Files, Games, Disks, Media, System, Arcade, Productivity, Preferences, Automation and Capture/Viewer — all on the same contract: adding a Center is four callbacks and a state struct.
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TS-SYS-02 // COMMODORE AMIGA 500
ChumOS
ChumOS / Workbench Infinity is a brand-new desktop for the 1987 Amiga 500, written in 2026. It replaces the classic Workbench with a flicker-free, synthwave-styled environment: a dual-pane file manager, an IFF viewer, a spreadsheet with a real formula engine, an agenda, disk tools, ARexx automation and a full arcade of built-in games and demos.
The synthwave Workbench the A500 deserved.
AVAILABLE · OPEN SOURCEAmiga 500 · KS 1.3+VS Workbench
160KILOBYTES
21.2KLINES OF C
0%IDLE CPU
10CENTERS
FREE · OPEN SOURCE (MIT)
Commodore1084S
DESKTOPOutrun · start menu · Arcade
SWITCH CHANNELS TO SEE MORE01 // WHAT IT IS
The system, no marketing
The Amiga scene never stopped: new games, hardware and demos ship every year for a machine discontinued three decades ago. What the scene rarely gets is a new desktop — an integrated, opinionated environment rather than a single app. ChumOS asks: if you designed the A500's dream workbench today, with everything we now know about UX and with today's tooling, what would it feel like?
The answer is modern manners with a classic soul: zero flicker, solid window drag at 50 fps via the Blitter, themes, keyboard shortcuts and a taskbar — but drawn with 1987 primitives, in 8 colors, on one floppy. The whole screen composes off-screen and blits in one beam-synced operation; nothing polls, so the entire system sleeps on a single Wait() and uses 0% CPU when you are not touching anything.
And it respects the silicon: every feature must be honest on a 68000 with 1 MB. No fantasy ports, no "requires an accelerator". If it cannot be done well at 7 MHz, it is documented as rejected — and that list is public.
A brand-new desktop for a 1987 machine — zero flicker, 8 colors, one floppy.
02 // WHAT IT DOES
What you can do with it
ZERO-FLICKER RENDERING
Every frame composes into an off-screen buffer and blits once, synced with WaitTOF(). Windows drag solid at 50 fps via the Blitter on a 7 MHz CPU.
NEON DUNGEON · 3D
A first-person dungeon crawler with nested-frame perspective, line of sight and chasing sentinels — rendered with integers only on a stock 68000.
A REAL SPREADSHEET
Infinity Calc: a genuine formula engine (SUM/AVG/MIN/MAX/COUNT), cycle detection, bar charts and IFF export. 32-bit integer math, not a single float.
ARexx AUTOMATION
An ARexx port (WBINFINITY) plus its own .wbs script runner. The desktop can be scripted end to end.
REAL IFF PIPELINE
The capture Center writes standard IFF ILBM and the viewer decodes BMHD/CMAP/BODY with ByteRun1, defensively: a corrupt file degrades to an error message, not a Guru Meditation. (In the Game Center the card still shows a text box; the decoded thumbnail lives in the viewer.)
ELEVEN HOT-SWAP THEMES
Eleven color schemes swappable on the fly, including five synthwave themes with an animated-feel "outrun" desktop. The neon sun and vanishing grid are the house mark.
HONEST FILE COPY
Copy, move, rename and delete files through an 8 KB buffer, with a status line telling you what is happening. Recursive folder copy is on the list, not on the floppy: the manual marks it as planned, and we do not advertise it before it is written.
03 // REAL SCREENSHOTS · 640×256 HIRES · 8 COLORS
A brand-new desktop for a 1987 machine
04 // ARCHITECTURE
How it's built inside
01
ZERO IDLE CPU
Nothing polls. Every event — input, a 1 Hz clock, a ~15 fps animation timer, audio, ARexx — arrives as a signal into a single Wait(). The animation timer is only armed while the front window actually animates.
02
ZERO-FLICKER COMPOSITE
RedrawAll composes desktop + windows + bar into an off-screen buffer and blits once, synced with WaitTOF(). Typing uses a per-window double buffer; mouse moves are coalesced.
03
"ChumWindow" FRAMEWORK
No layers.library, no Intuition window per app: Centers are rectangles repainted in Z-order on one canvas. That is why a desktop + office suite + 15 games and demos fit in 160 KB and 1 MB.
04
INTEGER EVERYTHING
The 3D dungeon, the Mandelbrot renderer, the spreadsheet engine and the audio subsystem run without a single floating-point operation. Graceful degradation from KS 1.3 to 3.x, version-checked at runtime.
// OPEN & REPRODUCIBLE
One-command reproducible build, CI on every commit
01
GCC cross · zero warnings
GCC 6.5 with -m68000 -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -noixemul -Wall -Wextra. 21,228 lines across 44 modules, zero warnings.
02
Reproducible build
make docker: a reproducible cross-build in the amigadev/crosstools container. Same binary, any machine.
03
CI on every push
GitHub Actions cross-compiles every push and PR with the same toolchain.
04
Bootable floppy
make adf builds the 880 K bootable floppy with amitools/xdftool. Boots in WinUAE, FS-UAE, Gotek and FPGA.
SPECIFICATIONS · Full spec sheet
- CPU
- Motorola 68000 @ 7.14 MHz (whole classic line)
- CHIPSET
- OCS/ECS · PAL or NTSC (256/200 lines auto)
- RAM
- 1 MB minimum (A500 Plus) · uses Fast RAM if present
- AMIGAOS
- Kickstart 1.3 → 3.x · runtime version-checked
- STORAGE
- 880 K DD floppy (ADF) or run from Workbench
- DISPLAY
- 640×256 HIRES · 3 bitplanes · 8 colors
- EXECUTABLE
- 160 KB · one file, everything built in
- CODEBASE
- 21,228 lines of C · 44 modules
- IDLE CPU
- 0% · the whole system sleeps on one Wait()
- LICENSE
- MIT · open source
// OPEN & HONEST
Wide open, and checkable in one command
CODEMIT
21,228 lines of C across 44 modules. One-command reproducible build; CI on every commit.
BUILDOne command
A zero-warning 68000 cross-compile, reproducible in a single command, with CI repeating it on every commit. No "works on my machine".
HONEST ENGINEERINGPublic list
What a 68000/ECS cannot do honestly — full-motion video, alpha, software 8-voice mixing — is documented as rejected.
DELEGATEDAmigaDOS
Destructive disk operations and module playback are delegated to proven tools (stock AmigaDOS commands, HippoPlayer), not reinvented.
CREATED BY · Dave Abellán · Claudio di Castello◆ github.com/Tombatossals-Softworks-LLC/ChumOS
05 // STATUS & ROADMAP
Where it is and where it goes
NOWAvailableBinary + bootable floppy in the repo. 10 Centers, 8 games, 7 demos, an office suite with a formula engine and ARexx. Phase 26 closed; recursive folder copy is still pending.
PHASE +EngineeringAsync file-operation queue with a progress bar; interrupt-driven MOD replay with VU meters in the Media Center; capture directly into a game card.
REACHCommunityEnglish UI language pack, an Aminet release and an itch.io page with the bootable ADF. A community theme pack.
LONGERFutureA hard-drive install package with icons, more Arcade titles (each game is a self-contained module) and guarded floppy tools with a safety model we trust.
// AVAILABILITY
.ADF FLOPPY (FREE)160 KB EXECUTABLESOURCE ON GITHUB11 THEMES INCLUDED
06 // QUESTIONS
Reasonable doubts
Any 68000 Amiga with Kickstart 1.3+ and 1 MB (the A500 Plus is the reference machine). Also WinUAE/FS-UAE, Gotek floppy emulators and FPGA recreations like MiSTer.
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