23 Apr
2016
23 Apr
'16
11:20 a.m.
On 04/20/2016 10:32 AM, Pete Turnbull wrote:
On 20/04/2016 16:00, Toby Thain wrote:
I remember there being some connection with the ACW and Quickchip CAD, but
IIRC the disks I had had been reformatted, and it wasn't obvious if any of
the product actually ran on the 32016 side of the machine, or if it was
just the same old 6502-side application which was available for regular BBC
micros.
On 2016-04-20 10:27 AM, Pete Turnbull wrote:
There was a collection of "scientific" software for the 32016 - things like
Spice, some maths software, and assorted CAD stuff It did indeed - I have one. Also a couple of
6502 CoPros, a 65C102, a
32016 and a pair of Z80s, which were nice in their day.
Nice collection. I'd forgotten about the 32016! What software ran on
these respective processors? licensed for the 32016 ACW and the Master Scientific,
which came later.
The Z80 CoPro ran CP/M - real licensed CP/M 2.2, not the bastardised
often-not-compatible "CPN" lookalike offered by Torch, and came with GEM
and various office software. The ARM CoPro originally had little software
beyond TWIN (the Two Window Editor), assembler, BASIC, and utilities. The
6502 variants - including the 65C102 that was used for the Master Turbo -
just ran whatever you'd otherwise have on the Beeb itself
On the back of that... the Cumana 68008 board ran OS-9, the 'bigger' of the
two Torch 68000 boards could run System III Unix, and if I remember right
the Casper 68000 board just came with a bunch of utilities and programming
tools (although I think FLEX may have been available as an optional extra
purchase). I'm not sure what the PEDL Z80 board came with. The Torch 8088
board ran MSDOS, I believe.
cheers
Jules