24 Aug
2012
24 Aug
'12
11:41 a.m.
On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Tony Duell wrote:
HTe difference is which key you press when typing an e-mail about it. In
other words I meant the QX10, it's one of my many typos...
My QX10 came with CP/M, I never got Valdocs, so I can't comment on it.
The hardware technical manual seems to imply the Valdocs keyboard is
different, and the keyboard I got with mine matches the scheamtics and
layout for the CP/M one in said manual, so I don't know if I could make
use of Valdocs f I did get it.
My favourite CP/M box is, I think, the Epson
QC10. Interesting hardware
at least. A 7220 for graphics, those lovely voice-coil floppy drives, etc.
Is that like the QX-10? In which case, how do you like Valdocs?
Or the Epson Geneve PX-8! A dozen of them will fit in a Kaypro case.
Intersting little machine. I never much liked the fact that the directory
of the microcassette was cahced in RAM and if you forgot to unmount the
tape before ejecting it yyou could end up losing data on that tape _and
on the next oen you loaded_.
There's also the PX4. Another laptop CP/M machine. This oen has a 40
column LCD and a place alongside it for an expansion catridge. It also
has the great advantage that it can run off 4 AA cells rather htna a
custom NiCd pack, and if you do want to use the NiCd battery, you don;t
need to grab a screwdriver to fit it.
I haveb a 3rd party 513K RAMdisk cartridge in mine. I'd love to find some
of the Epson cartridges for it. As well as the obvious microcassette
drive (There is no built-in microcassette on the PX4), there was also a
tiny printer, an EPROM programmer (!) and a DMM. Those would be serious fun.
Did anyone ever do anything useful with the ADC input on the PX8, I
wonder. I get the impression it was only there because there ws a spare
channel on the ADC chip. The user manual expalins how to use it, complete
with machien code listings (!). They don't write manuals like that any
more :-(
Does the Epson TF20 floppy drive unit count as a CP/M machine? For those
who don't know this thing, it's the add-on floppy drive for the
HX20/PX4/PX8. It's got 2 of those nice 5.25" voice-coil floppy drives and
a controller board. That controller board contaisn a Z80A, 64K RAM, a 2K
bootstrap EPROM, and a fair amount of glue logic. A daughterboard
contains a 7201 serial chip and RS232 buffers to talk to the laptop.
Thing is, it boots its OS from disk, and I am pretty srue it's based --
heavily -- on CP/M.
-tony