C64-C128 CP-M Cartridge Interest

On 12/25/2010 12:24 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: I looked at that port, it's not Z80 compatible. CP/M and all had to be re-assembled for the eZ80. Same would be required to run many of the apps and utilities. The CP/M system is three parts. CCP (console monitor or user interface), BDOS (actual device and files system logical interface and applications interface), BIOS( hardware abstraction unique to the local hardware to match the abstracted interface of the BDOS). User usually did not rewrite the CCP or BDOS just relocate it with MOVCPM. The BIOS was unique to the local system and matched the calls for console in, console out, console status, same for printer, punch, reader , and then the interface to the mass storage (setdma, SETtrack, Setsector, SECTRAN(logical to physical translate for sector skewing on floppies) READ, WRITE. FOR 8085/Z80 the CCP and BDOS are a give block of binary (we officially have sources now) and the BIOS is written as needed. A BIOS can be complex or simple depending on hardware and user desires. Oddly it takes more code to do something like a floppy as you have to handhold the FDC chip all the way. smarter devices like IDE, CF, SD are easier and the only real task is to match the CP/M logical 128byte block to the devices 512byte standard block (physical sector). The latter is fairly easy, the code is even in the CP/M alteration guide. I've implemented CPm on Z80 with less than 16 pcs TTL, memory, EPROM and CPU total and that was using 32K ram x2 (there are 64K parts!). The IDE, CF or SD interfaces can be pretty trivial with SD and CF being preferred as CF does do an 8bit mode, and SD is a serial interface with only a few lines. That leaves the more interesting IO, user console, and ports to run a printer or communicate with maybe a PC. [note one port with the right protocol can do all that if the host is playing terminal, printer, storage]. Allison