[cctalk] Re: For Fred, especially: "Everything I know about floppy disks"

On Sun, 10 Sept 2023 at 16:09, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: Oh yes indeed. I think I have, in my basement in Prague, two Amstrad PCW 9512 machines, an original 9512 (1987, one 3" drive) and a 9512+ (1991, one 3.5" drive). Both DS/DD and 720 kB. I believe -- not tried it -- that the 9512+ can read/write DOS floppies. (The second was a kind gift from a list member -- thanks Roger!) I suspect that the 9512+ was the last ever new CP/M machine (excluding 21st century hobbyist kit). They had a volatile ~450kB RAM disk as drive M: and 720x256 mono graphics, with a text resolution of 90*32. As CP/M machines they are pretty nice kit. No slots and not very expandable, but very capable spec. You could load all the nonresident CP/M commands into the M: drive and then it was a capable single-floppy machine which never needed the boot disk again. No idea of the CPU performance. 4MHz Z80A but whether there was any contention or anything I have no idea. I believe one of the interesting bits of the design is that there's no ROM at all. They came with a dedicated printer (as well as a Centronics port) and masked into a corner of the printer controller chip was a tiny bit of bootstrap code. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053