Joe, CP/M-80 is 2.2, and real computers don't need more than 64K...
The 820, at least the later ones, used big 984K discs. I hardly ever ran
out of space. There was an 8 meg rigid drive available too, but I neever
filled that up either. WordStar on the 820 just grinds along, and works
very satisfyingly. At least 3 word processing packages were avialable
plus business graphics, multiplan, quite a few programming languages.
XWP wasn't so great, apparently a primitive WordStar, WordStar was superb
if cryptic, and there was another nice one, a bit glitzy and modern for
my taste, but put WordPerfect to shame, but hey, even a blank screen does
that. Don Maislin may remember the name, he likes that particular
programme. Ran very well on 5-1/4 inch drives.
There was a memory expansion available for the 16/8, but I've never seen it.
The DEM-II is interesting because the card rack is very like the NEC APC-II.
Incidentally, Hyperion's DOS 1.25 runs circles around the Xerox DOS 2.0.
On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, Joe wrote:
Merle,
At 10:24 PM 3/28/99 -0500, Merle wrote:
The 16/8 is an interesting machine. It came in 2
versions, the earliest
with 8" Shugart drives, a later with a DEM-II expansion case housing
5-1/4 inch drives. The CP/M-86 is not bad, but the MS-DOS is...well
MS-DOS.
Not surprising considering it's only ver 2.0 . At least that's what I
got in this load.
Incredibly primitive compared to CP/M 2.2.
I don't know that much about CPM but this machine only has CPM-80 and
CPM-86. How do they compare to CP/M 2.2?
One problem is that
many were shipped with 128K memory. With the
dinky drives, the machines
are disappointing. The old 8" 820-II is a far better and more usable
machine.
Better than the 16/8? I thought it was newer. How much memory did the
820-II have?
Thanks for the info.
Joe
On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Joe wrote:
Today I went to see a couple of the people
that I meet at yesterday's
hamfest. One of them used to service XEROX computers. He told me that he
threw out three rooms full of old XEROX computers less than a year ago. :-(
He gave me part of the stuff that he had left, I have to take a Truck
(note capital) back to get the rest (estimated at two cubic yards but no
complete machines). So far I've found lots of docs and 8" flopppy disks
for the 820 and 16/8. The 16/8 looks pretty interesting, it ran CPM,
CPM-86 and MS-DOS. Does anyone have one of these? What's your opinion of
them?
He has a floppy disk drive control box to manual operate 3.5", 5.25" and
8" drives during alignment. Anyone have an idea of what one of these is
worth with the alignment disks and manuals?
Alos found a Lisa mouse to go with the Lisa that I got yesterday.
Joe
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
215 Shady Lea Road,
North Kingstown, RI 02852
"Casta est qui nemo rogavit."
- Ovid
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
215 Shady Lea Road,
North Kingstown, RI 02852
"Casta est qui nemo rogavit."
- Ovid