Hi, That's pretty depressing. I have a kaypro II setting here. I knew it wasn't worth much, but $40 bucks isn't worth the time to pack it. I think I could get more tearing it down and selling the drives and other CPU bits. Ugh!. JimD. barythrin at gmail.com wrote:

People are trying to take my home. I've been paying for 14 years with one year left, I need the money. I have had most of the stuff i'm setting on for 20 to 30 years. Too much stuff and no work. Don't ever, EVER take out a credit consolidation loan. I owned this place 15 years ago when everything was roses. Took it to use the mortgage tax write off. Jimd. Dave McGuire wrote:

Hi Dave, In the middle of nowhere. A place called Goldendale Wa. USA, 130 Miles west of Portland Or. Under the cloud of Google in "The Dalles" All my work has been in Portland since 2000., Horrible traffic. Never met any smelly hippies. Radisys and Intel contracts have been my life. I got canned from my guaranteed "CEO: Everyone in this room is going to get really rich": 5 year gig doing avionics for undefined reasons. Aviation buffs might get the humor.. Cheers, Jimd. Dave McGuire wrote:

Chuck Guzis wrote: you almost have my g-zero coords. ;-) 253 Pothole Rd. Between two caldera lakes. Very interesting weather.

jimpdavis wrote: You mean *east* of Portland. 70 miles west of Portland is extremely wet and salty, not at all suitable for use or storage of a Kaypro II. If you think Goldendale is in the middle of nowhere, you should try Moses Lake. A friend and I just drove from there to Portland yesterday, and went past Goldendale on highway 97. We wanted to stop a little south of you to see Maryhill Stonehenge, but it was too dark by the time we got there. I'll have to visit it on a future trip.

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, jimpdavis wrote: A Kaypro would probably float for a little while. Once it took on water, it would pull you down.

On 23 August 2012 06:12, Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote: Precisely mine own thought, and my USanian geography is hazy... I thought Portland was on the west coast? -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

When my wife and I need to travel the length of the Gorge from Portland to wherever and have the time, rather than taking that rat race called I-84, we'll take Washington 14 (Lewis and Clark) on the north side. Usually pretty quiet with ample opportunities to stop and take in the scenery. Maryhill Stonehenge is a spooky place. We make it a point to go over the cable bridge between Pasco and Kennewick--it was designed by a good friend of mine who still calls it "his bridge". --Chuck

On 23 Aug 2012 at 14:28, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Yup, that's the one--I was surprise to find an article on WikiP simply calling it the "Cable Bridge": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_bridge The Eastern Washington setting really works also. --Chuck

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, Dave McGuire wrote: I've got two! (a 4-84 and a 10). Head over to http://www.microcodeconsulting.com/z80/kayplus.htm and make yourself a KayPLUS ROM. It makes for a very nice, inexpensive update. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, David Griffith wrote: I honestly don't know - you might want to email the author and find out. I can't imagine there would be a huge stumbling block to making it work if it didn't already. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

I think Kaypros are among the best CP/M machines ever built. Compact (for the day), reliable, quick, very nice overall. I sold and serviced them for a few years, and I happily collect and enjoy them now. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA On Aug 23, 2012, at 12:24 AM, mc68010 <mc68010 at gmail.com> wrote:

On 22 Aug 2012 at 21:44, mc68010 wrote: There were some glorious CP/M and 8-bit systems produced by the Japanese. One of the major issues is that Japanese machines after about 1981 tended to use Shift-JIS and hi-res graphics for display, which CP/M-80 just wasn't up to. So there are a few proprietary OS. --Chuck

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:44 AM, mc68010 <mc68010 at gmail.com> wrote: I used them back in the day (c. 1985) at a couple of places. I never thought much about the design one way or the other except that I thought the screen was smaller than I would have liked (I was used to 12" or so CRTs, from VT100s and various 8-bit micros). The portability was nice, but I would have been just as happy with a "desktop" CP/M machine. While I have a Kaypro II and did enjoy borrowing one to take to VCFe to run old Infocom games on, it was never my preferred personal platform. Someone here asked why there's not much nostalgia for these sorts of systems, and in my own case, I'd have to say it has to do with my age and what machines I encountered and when (baby duck syndrome). When CP/M was a big deal in hobby computing, I was a kid and couldn't afford all the expensive hardware it took to run it (8" drives, in large part). My family only knew a few of people who owned a computer in the mid-1970s (as a hobby or for a small business). I think one family friend had a Northstar Horizon but that was for business so kids were not allowed to play on it (I don't think he had anything except business apps anyway). One friend had a Challenger III and that _was_ fun to play on, but it was no Northstar (or Kaypro). One or two owned TRS-80s once those came out, but only the lesser models, no floppy drives. On a wider scale, there were two user groups that met in Columbus in the late-1970s that I was aware of - one met downtown and was full of owners of CP/M machines, but that group was full of, to me at that age, grouchy old men who had no time for an inquisitive pre-teen; the other group met in the suburbs (i.e., harder to get to for a city kid), but was specifically a Commodore PET group. That group was welcoming to all ages, and since I was already learning on a 4K PET at the public library, it cemented my direction. My family couldn't afford a $2K+ rig, but we did eventually (2-3 years later) bought a $1K 32K PET with tape drive. So for me, CP/M was out of reach when it was at its most popular, so I never developed much affinity for it. I don't dislike it (beyond some minor quibbles), but neither was I involved with it to the point of developing any nostalgia. I knew it existed but didn't really get my hands on it until about 1985 when it was well into its decline into obscurity propelled by the massive rise of MS-DOS (which I do dislike for specific technical reasons as well as the "well everyone uses it so it must be the best" mentality that came with the monopoly). So in recent years, I've dabbled with CP/M, I own 2-3 machines that run it, but I've honestly spent more time running the Altair emulator with Simh than any real hardware in the past 20 years. One thing that I have been enjoying lately is re-reading pre-1982 Byte magazines which were chock full of Z-80 and CP/M articles and ads and, with 30 years of learning to help, finally grokking what I once read as a kid. I definitely remember reading each one but I simply lacked enough background to understand what I read (and since I didn't hang around with the CP/M crowd, I didn't know anyone who could interpret it for me). -ethan

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, jimpdavis wrote: Are you familiar with the modern Interactive Fiction community? Lots of nice text-adventures there. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

I like the Kaypros fine, but I like the Commodore 128 better for CP/M. It may be slow, but it's a nice implementation. It *is* odd that CP/M induces relatively little nostalgia and a whole lot of nausea. You'd think that it would have its rabid partisans. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Yes, but when I try to see things your way it gives me a headache. ---------

Clearly the best CP/M system I ever used was based on a software emulation of an 8080 (might have been an 8085) running on a VAX. All the useful CP/M software with the hardware reliability of a VAX :-) I should see if I have the source code and recompile it for a modern Itanium system (it was written in VAX BASIC IIRC). Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"

On 22 Aug 2012 at 21:49, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Not me. I used it since about 1.3. I did my share of ports and found the platform to be very limiting. CP/M Plus was getting there, as was MP/M II, but for the most popular, CP/M 2.2, it's hard to get excited about not much and a simplistic file management setup. --Chuck

On 23 Aug 2012 at 12:21, Allison wrote: Going to a different file system was about the smartest thing that (SCP/Microsoft) ever did. The rest of the MS-DOS and CP/M API is pretty weak, but that filesystem made a huge difference. People may gripe about Microsoft "stealing" from DRI, but if I were in the driver's seat at IBM, there would be no questions as to which system was superior. And what is CP/M or MS-DOS but a file management facility? There was TurboDOS, but it wasn't even close to being an open system. We did our own OS, complete with ISAM support and loadable device drivers. Again, the CP/M internal interface didn't envision that people would want to support other devices than a simple console, printer, reader and punch. As such stuff was available on mainframe OS, I can't say that DRI was forward-looking. ZCPR was a big CLI improvment, but DRI evidently didn't think it was worth emulating. --Chuck

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:21:57PM -0400, Allison wrote: I haven't used CP/M. What was the significant items that were better about OS/8 than CP/M? I had thought they were similar in capability (and even shared some command names).

At 11:14 AM 8/24/2012, Allison wrote: OS/8 on the DEC PDP-8 was most definitely single-task, single-user. There were other PDP-8 operating systems such as TSS-8 (EDUsystem-50) which were multi-task/multi-user, as well as time-sharing systems that were multitasking. You may be thinking about the fact that OS/8 could be run as a background job as part of RTS-8. I don't know how anyone could call OS/8 more powerful than CP/M. OS/8 was a very, very simple system. OS/8 does just a few things: it allows you to read/write files, has a command decoder, and a keyboard monitor (command line). It has no services for critical things like console terminal input/output, has a rudimentary file system, and basically doesn't do much. Now, if you replace the "OS/8" above with "RT-11" I'd be in agreement. -Rick

On 8/25/12 6:17 AM, allison wrote: TSS/8 only gives you a virtual 4K PDP-8 MULTOS/8 support 32K of addressing, ETOS supports 20K but required a special memory mapping board http://www.pdp8.net/os/

At 05:12 PM 8/25/2012, allison wrote: I'm not so sure about that. Let's look at the OS/8 requirement of 8K and see what we could 'hack' to make it fit in 4K. That's not possible because the User Service Routine (USR) entry point is at field 1, location 7700. You can't just move that, as every program using OS/8 would have to be rewritten to know where it's located. (Not to mention relocating the Command Decoder tables, date word, etc.) So you can't run OS/8 in less than 8KW. (P?S/8 perhaps could.). How about hacking TSS-8 so that it handles 8KW programs so OS/8 can run? I suppose it's possible, but it would require a massive restructuring of the TSS-8 RMON to permit linking two memory fields together so they're swapped in as a unit, plus adding code to support an OS/8 filesystem. There's just no room in TSS-8 to permit that much code. This isn't just speculation - my first job at DEC was in the group that supported TSS/8. I've seen the effort necessary to do much simpler things given the memory available - for example, replacing the RF08 code with code to support an RK8E/RK05 as the system disk took major bit bumming to fit. Similarly the code to support the KL8-A four-line serial multiplexer that I wrote was hard to jam in. There's just no room. Adding the equivalent of the OS/8 USR (which handles the file systems and takes up memory from 10000 through 11777 in OS/8) would be quite an accomplishment. I'm sure that you're confusing TSS-8 with ETOS or MULTOS/8, probably the latter. Yeah, and that "bastard stepchild" problem is part of why CP/M has a slight edge over OS/8: If OS/8 had use something like the BIOS for console interaction, something like OS/278 with everything patched to support the DM-III's broken console device wouldn't have been necessary. Fix it in the "BIOS", not in every user utility program. I'm not arguing that CP/M was a major leap from what OS/8 gave you. What OS/8 does with a really tiny memory footprint (just two pages of permanently resident memory used) was damn impressive. -Rick

allison wrote: So I've always heard. But how can one get P?S/8?

On 08/26/2012 06:43 PM, allison wrote: Wasn't that a CJL project? Surely he has it. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

At 08:11 PM 8/26/2012, Al Kossow wrote: No, unfortunately. That's something I really regret as there was no easy way to get stuff off my PDP-8 in a portable form. It wasn't trivial to get the RK05 to work as an alternative since TSS-8 assumes a disk device that can be read or written a word at a time. I/O that wasn't sector sized or sector aligned had to be buffered and copied out to the real memory locations. I gave away my PDP-8, disk packs and all, when I got married. I don't think I should say much more than that. :) -Rick

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, Cameron Kaiser wrote: While I like the Kaypros, I prefer my TRS-80 Model 4 as a CP/M system. Back in the day, I ran Montezuma Micro CP/M 2.2 on this system and with its second bank of 64KB available as a RAMdisk, it was quite snappy. MM also had the capability of defining virtual drives as other CP/M formats, so you could have, for example, a D: drive set up as a Kaypro or Osborne format. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 07:11:15AM -0700, geneb wrote: Sounds like a feature! -- Proud Ex-Radio Shack Employee

Not under CP/M, but have you ever tried writing C on a CoCo II? No {} leuys, no [] keys (AFAIK), upper case only display (lower case was displayed in inverse video) and 32*16 characters at that. I upgraded ot a CoCo 3 as soon as I could... -tony

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Mike Loewen wrote: I didn't know that - thanks for the tip! g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Mike Loewen wrote: I don't recall what version of CP/M I've got for it - I'd have to unbag the system and check... Which version, the Citadel or UNIX? g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Mike Loewen wrote: :P g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Eric Smith wrote: The manuals (reference and programming) are available here: http://www.manmrk.net/tutorials/TRS80/Software/cpm/index.htm Disk images in DMK format can be found here: http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/comp/trs80-4p/trs80Archives_cpm/ MM CP/M works quite well in emulators such as 'xtrs' and 'sdltrs', including the hard disk driver. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Tony Duell wrote: 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.

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Tony Duell wrote: Tony, your typos are not many, THEY ARE LEGION. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Tony Duell wrote: Seems familiar with some other systems. CP/M needed ^C when changing disks. So did MS-DOS! (sometimes) I never could find ANYWHERE in any Microsoft manuals any mention of pressing ^C when changing disks. Yes, it did sometimes use the cached DIRectory instead of the newly inserted disk!

On 08/24/2012 05:58 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: It was needed for MSdos for two reasons to refresh the in ram copy of the FAT and because MSDOS ALSO supported FCB (CP/M style) access. Yes there was a lot that Peter Norton documented for MSdos that wasn't in the manuals. Then again once the system configuration manuals disappeared it was very uncommon to see MSdos off the PC platform but at one time it was not unusual to see it on 8088/8086 equipped S100 machines. Allison

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Dave McGuire wrote: "supposed to". so was the diskchange signal. But, the volume serial number was not prexent on early disks - when did it show up? 3.xx? The volume serial number could be the same on two disks, if they had originally been created (before being changed) as duplicates made with earlier tools, AND, it could still do it if the diskchange line was not properly implemented (not at all uncommon with that line being used sometimes for other purposes (ready?). Without a diskchange signal, the system would have no reason to go look at the serial number !

I am not overly in love wit hthe design of the case. From what I remember the floppy drives are fixed to the cover, you have to lift it a little way and then unplug the data and poweer cables to get the case apart. But I cna tolerate it. I stripped mine when I first got the machine, cleaned everything and id a full alignment. Be warned that strippign the positioner is not recomended -- aligning it is 'fun'. And strippign the spinde motor is certainly not recomented -- therte's a tacho coil in the cover with thin wires goign down to the PCB. They're covered in quange, so you don't notice them until you've ripped them off. I had to remove the coil, unwind a ocuple of turns and put it back (fortunately the inner end of the widing was still long enough to sodler to, so I didn't have to unwind the whole coil). My diagrams for the TF20 -- I think they're on one of the old computer sites -- include rather more scehamtics for this drive than the Epson manual... I think oyu must be the only person here _not_ to have an Epson dot matrix printer :-). Theyr are easy to find. Finding HPIB and HPIL interfacea for them (either is needed for the QX10, of course, but they do both exist) is rather harder. No, I don;'t run it enough for that to be a problem. I open it up and clean it from time to time anyway. Didn't Torch call it 'CPN' (or was it 'CP/N')? -tony

Ah yes, I think I remember tjhat now. Given the lack of space on my workbench, I remember hodlign the top case (with the fairly heavy drvies in it) with one and whill fiddlign the screw in wiot hthe other. All to meet FCC ruquirements :-) Don't. The official head radial alignment involves moving the positoned on the chassis (I think there's a cam screw fro that). That is fairly easy if you have an alignment disk. But if you strip the positioenr itself, you can have great fun settign it up so that odd and even tracks are equally spaced, for example. But IMHO the spindle motor is worse. Do not strip that unless you really have to. [Epson dot matrix printer] Ah... That expalisn it. IIRC, such printers are either still being made, or have only recently been discontinued. Their advantaeg is that they will aprt on multi-part (carbon copy) forms, and some businssses still use those. Yes, you could print out 3 separate pages on an inkjet or laser printer in less time, but I guess businesses like the idea that all 3 copies (or whatever) were printed together so they must be the same. I have one of htose somewhere, I need to find out more about it. And indeed find how to make pens for it. -tony

and $$$ On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:

On 08/25/2012 10:29 AM, Jules Richardson wrote: Why? If DOS was tolerable then CP/M was by virtue of it did the least to get in the way. Then again in the PC world (8088) DOS was largely dominant. For the 8080/z80 world DOS usually meant something far weaker than CP/M such as NS*DOS, FDOS or worse a keyboard monitor. CP/M could be matched to most 8080/z80/z180 hardware, NS*DOS for example was married to the NS* MDS (mini Disk system). What is "otherwise-complicated machines"? Is this a z80 with more than 32K, mass storage. and two serial ports? To me thats not a complicated machine. I would say having a an OS that can do basic IO and file storage did allow ME to do things like not write IO drivers and instead concentrate on solving problems. That was good hardware but it was a PC with chrome trim. Not unique to most PCs and many other machines. There were many outright ripoffs, I looked at one at the byte level and it was a copy of CP/M2 with the same bugs but a new splash screen. Also a few public domain Clean-room functional replacements that had improvements like P2DOS, SUPRBDOS, and some commercial products that were clearly improved CP/M replacements like ZRDOS and a few others. I have several. They are a lot of work to make different brand boards work and nothing is ever plug and play. Some boards and CPUs plain will not work in combination. I have a pair of NS* horizons a few Compupro and a complete CCS and two Altairs (8800 early and 8800BT boards from the latter are not usable in the earlier or the other way around!) . I tend to build one up and leave it alone. Board swapping usually tended to kill working systems. While versatile the bus was not well thought out as it was the ALTAIR bus and in the beginning for undecoded 8080 status and control signals. When the Z80 hit, those signals had to be faked as the Z80 had simpler set of control signals with very different timing. Want a good 8080/z80 bus try ECB or MultiBUS, though for Z80 STD was popular in the industrial controls realm. I like bus oriented systems but the bus has to be simple (or at least concise) and coherent and S100 was furthest from that. Every board I did for S100 had to be buffered for in-data and out-data as they were separate, then I had to take all the loss control signals and decode them into IO-read, IO-write, mem-read, mem-write, IN-data enable and out-data enable and heaven forbid if I wanted to be Bus master (DMA or second CPU). In the end 7-9 pieces of TTL LSI or two gals and and a pair of LS245s for basic IO card. Adding bus master in the minimal form meant at least 12 pieces of TTL for the bus interface and then you had the actual card function components. Also 80% of the S100 crates made the cooling air flow, doesn't. Even my favored NS* has 144pound card stock taped in to direct the air from the PS cavity to across the cards. The Compupro and CCS was not much better. The ALTAIR crates the fan blew or sucked air from the card end edges but, the other end of the card from had no entrance or exit for the airflow. TEI did make a box with enough well placed sheet metal to direct air across the cards, those were scarce and cost much more as they did a better PS as well. One thing about S100, it it wasn't heavy it was wrong. Things I know from being part of that whole era and others as well. Allison

I hae the HP120. alas I never managed to get the right keyboard for it, so I made a couple of workarounds. One lets me connect an HP262x terminal keyboard to it, the other was to modifty a apare HP150 keyboard to have the right keymap. The 120 is quite small and light. It's muc hthe same case as the HP150, of course. For some odd reason the itnernal printer was never available, even though the interfae is fitted on the backplanem so the case top cover is differnet to the HP150 one. That suprises me. I alwauys thought the hP125 was essentailyl an HP262x terminal with a totaly differnt logic board, and as such the power swithc would be round the back. -tony

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Geoff Reed wrote: You are probably thinking of "Lifeboat".

Besides peddling CP/M ports, Lifeboat for a while was the primary "official" retail and wholesale outlet for Microsoft. When Microsoft announced FORTRAN for TRS80, I needed some copies in a hurry, for a community college to use for a FORTRAN class. Lifeboat told me 2 weeks. When they didn't show, I called and they said a few days. When they didn't show, I called and they said already shipped. When they didn't show, I called and they said a few days. When they didn't show, I called and they said a few weeks. I was going to be changing planes in Seattle on the way back from the eclipse. I called Bob Wallace at Microsoft. He ran off three copies, and waited for me at the airport. Those were the first three copies. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Are there any modern ready-to-go SBCs capable of running CP/M?

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 09:14:16AM -0400, David Riley wrote: A complete, preassembled SBC. I've been admiring those and I would love to build a couple of them but I can't get to my tools now and where I live I can't get parts easily. So if I get anything it has to be "ready to go".

Do you mean hobbyist or COTS? There are several hobby SBCs that can do it, including the P112 and N8VEM. There are 68k and 8086 boards as well. Rich Cini Sent from my iPhone On Aug 23, 2012, at 8:56 AM, microcode at zoho.com wrote:

On Aug 23, 2012, at 10:01 AM, microcode at zoho.com wrote: Commercial-Off-The-Shelf. Basically meaning anything that you can buy preassembled online or in stores, which is what you're looking for. However, the US Government seems to believe it means anything semi-custom that will take an amount of glue logic equal to or greater than the device itself to integrate into any realistic system. - Dave

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, microcode at zoho.com wrote: COTS == Commercial Off The Shelf. Check this out: http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=18 It's Vince Briel's Altair 8800 Micro. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, microcode at zoho.com wrote: If you're after a small blinkenlights machine, I'd say so. Keep in mind that this replica is VERY small in comparison to the real thing. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, George Rachor wrote: It looks like he may get all the Imsai assets from Todd F. and start building new machines. That would just kick ass. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

Thanks for posting that link, the guy has some great stuff! -------- Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP On 2012-08-23, at 10:32 AM, geneb <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote:

On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Paul Anderson <wackyvorlon at me.com> wrote: Yep. I've bought more than one kit from him (and even was able to drop by his old place in Cleveland before he moved to get a spare part or two). I don't have the mini Altair but I did see him show it off at VCFmw in Lombard, IL, a couple of years back. I highly recommend his stuff! -ethan

I prefer kits for many reasons : They normally come with adequate documatation. I can assmeble them with 'proper' leadad solder, so connections stay good I will use quality paets where I can. Turned-pin DIL sockets, 105 degree capacitors, etc. Not the cheapest parts all the time I can make any modifiactions I need to. -tony

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 9:13 PM, Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote: I've built several kits from Vince Briel and Bob Armstrong over the past 15 years - I've got source, schematics, GAL equations, and I usually buy bare boards and source my own components and burn my own programmable devices (ROMs, MCUs, and logic devices) for them. -ethan

Plus the satisfaction of building it yourself. I find that to be the most rewarding part. -------- Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP On 2012-08-23, at 5:11 PM, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, David Griffith wrote: What about an actual Kickstarter project for a run of them? A $2000 goal isn't much and would attract attention via Hackaday and some other sites I think. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On 8/23/2012 6:07 PM, Eric Smith wrote: Are there any versions of cp/m for any of the Zilog Z8 evaluation boards like this http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZiLOG/Z8F04A28100KITG/?qs=%2fha2pyFaduh… They sell for less than $50. Seems much easier than designing one off home made z80 boards.

On 23 Aug 2012 at 20:49, Tom Uban wrote: Well, there's always one of the FTDI Vinculum modules...I believe that they have a capability for UART I/O. I'm surprised that no one mentioned CP/M for the Z8000. There was one. --Chuck

mc68010 wrote: The Z8 is not Z80 [not the same Arch or instruction set] and is a smaller chip design as a single chip microcontroller. CP/M is not a fit for that. Ez80 is close enough though. UR kiddin? All that is needed is Z80, 32-64K ram, some rom to boot, some mass-storage, and a userIO [serial or parallel port to a terminal]. Allison

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, David Griffith wrote: DOOOOO EEEEET! :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, Cameron Kaiser wrote: I cut my teeth on a Royal AlphaTronic CP/M machine and that's where I got my love of CP/M from. Unfortunately, the machine somehow got lost when I moved in 2006 and I haven't been able to find a replacement. :( g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On 23 Aug 2012 at 10:54, Michael Kerpan wrote: Yup, got a "Joyce" here (120V US version, probably sold by Sears). The 3" drive has been replaced with a 3.5" one (there's a gotcha with the power cable--same connector as a 3.5" but the +5 and +12 are interchanged. The Joyce does require a "ready" signal, so you need to either use a drive that provides one or tie it active). Mine has 512K of memory installed. The downside is the utter lack of a standard peripheral interface (e.g. Centronics parallel or RS232) or a way to modify the boot code, which appears to be contained in the ASIC printer interface. --Chuck

On 23 Aug 2012 at 13:32, Michael Kerpan wrote: I did find that tinkering with a byte in the boot sector of the 40- track floppy Joyce, I could get it to boot and recognize a 720K 3.5" drive as such. One interesting thing is that the Joyce has *no* native text mode. Until you boot a system that can generate characters, there is no text display. Some of the Japanese Z80 boxes boasted dual CPUs and 640x400 16-color displays. It's a shame that more hasn't been written on them. Or for that matter, the 6809-based Japanese PCs. --Chuck

[Amstrad PCW] There was an Amstrad Centronics/RS232 interface for it, which plugged ont othe 50 pin bus conenctor. Fidning infromation on it is non-trivial, I assuem there was a servicv emanual for it, but I have never seen it. I do have oen somwwhere, and from what I recall it's all stnadard ICs inside (TTL and Z80 peripehral ICs, mostly). Next time I come across it and hard soem free time I might be convinced to trace out the schematic. I thought the pritner controller was an 8041/8042 thingy. There's a PQFP SAIC that contaisn most of the video circuitry, etc, I think the boot 'ROM is hardwired logic in there. -tony

On 24 August 2012 00:27, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: You're right, it is ROMless - q.v.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW#Technical_design But why is this a problem? It can boot LocoScript, CP/M, SymbOS ( http://www.symbos.de/ ) and I have a feeling that there is/was a Contiki port for it as well ( http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Contiki ). There's quite a variety of OSs. What would you want to change the ROM for? -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

It certainjly was an unconventional design. I didnt like it much either, but then I dislike custom gate arrys in general... Rememebr it was not intended to be really expanded. I fixed a number of PCWs #back i nthe day' and can't rememebr PSU problems being very common Err, R50002 seems to monitor the chopper transisotr emitter current, along with one of the transistors in IC5001 (the swithcing regualtor control IC You cna wirie in normal fast-blow fused if you hve to. Those 'circuit protectors' are not common over here, but you can get them I would think very few. An Amsatrad service dealer would have hte service manual, and would be expected to check the PSU votlages early on. I believe Amstrad would supply a complete PSU/moitor PCB , but I susepct most dealers knew to change the circuit protector. As for other epople, well, the service manauls was trivial to get, and anyone clueful enough to get it owuld know to check said circuit protectors. Other people would go to the dealer (see above) -tony

On 23/08/2012 15:54, Michael Kerpan wrote: I still have four new, old stock Amstrad PcW9512+ in storage, still in boxes if anyone in the UK really needs one. 3.5 inch 720 K floppy as standard with this model!! Roger

On 23 August 2012 15:54, Michael Kerpan <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> wrote: I was going to say pretty much that! I guess there's little awareness because [a] they're not American and weren't big in America, [b] they were a very late-period CP/M machine and thus not very "classic" and [c] Amstrad are perceived as cheap & plasticky. The "Joyce" was a lovely machine, I thought. I got a PCW9512 as my 21st birthday present in 1988. It was fast for a Z80, had a whacking great 90*32 screen (IIRC), 720K drives and a parallel port. Decent keyboard, too. And of course a nice big RAMdisk as drive M:, so a single-floppy machine was entirely usable - I set up boot scripts to copy all the nonresident CP/M commands to M and set whatever the CP/M equivalent of a search path was. You could fit half a floppy's worth in there, so only needing a data disk in the drive. 720*256 graphics (again, IIRC), with a bright attribute, too, I think. I had /very/ slow Mandelbrot sets rendering on it. More or less a CP/M box with a Hercules Graphics Card. :?) It had CP/M+ but no RTC, so timestamps didn't work unless you entered the time manually at boot-up. I was very kindly given a mint, BNIB-in-box PCW9512+ by listmember Roger Pugh a couple of years ago. The little -known 9512+ replaces the 3" floppies with a more standard 3?", which is handy. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

One thing that's always bothered me about CP/M and MS-DOS, for that matter. Why, oh, why when the machine is doing nothing are the disk drive heads always (or nearly so) positioned over the directory track? While a glitch can wipe out a whole track, at least MS-DOS may allow one to recover the files based on the FAT contents (assuming that it doesn't share the same track as the directory), losing the directory track on a CP/M machine is suicide. One has to go and piece together the files cluster by cluster. Why not, during idle periods, move the heads one cylinder to a "leave garbage here" track? This was always a mystery to me. --Chuck

On 24 Aug 2012 at 18:39, allison wrote: Easy, move the heads when a close is issued. Yes, I know that many programs didn't bother with open or close calls, as CP/M cared only that the FCB described something, whatever it was. Move the heads when the system is sitting at a command prompt. Moving one cylinder is trivial in terms of timing compared to the average rotational latency of a disk. Not even MP/'M or CP/M 3.0 that actually had timekeeping would do this. MS-DOS had timekeeping and didn't do that. What does a whole track cache have to do with this? Yes, so why not position over a junk track when the system isn't actively doing disk access? Apple OS writes a duplicate directory at the end of the disk, but it's usually far out of sync with the main one. Well yes and no--I can show you some CP/M layouts where that's not true--the National Semi BLC 86/12 system puts the directory on track 39 with data blocks allocated alternately first on cylinders below the directory, going toward cylinder 0 and the system boot tracks, then cylinders after the directory, going toward cylinder 79. There are other similar CP/M implementations. And not all CP/M implementations start the directory on a track boundary (the Allen- Bradley Advisor+ and the BU-60 aircraft test set, for example--or the Coleco Adam). The point is that losing system boot tracks isn't a big deal--files can still be read from the disk--and with a utility, the boot tracks can be restored. Killing both file name and allocation information is a catastrophe. Not zeroes, but a genuine DC erase--if the CPU lost power before the disk unit, WRITE GATE would be pulled low and the entire track wiped with a DC level. I'm looking at a Z37-written floppy where that's happened. I can be somewhat successful in recovering file data with some guessing, but there's no way to recover file names. --Chuck

On 24 Aug 2012 at 20:48, Dave McGuire wrote: ...and that's just my point. I suppose that the BIOS could "hook" the BDOS interface, since it (the BIOS) is responsible for plugging location 5 with the BDOS entry point. If it weren't for some programs using the address of the jump in location 5 for the base of the BDOS, it might even work. But heck, the BDOS already communicates to the BIOS in read/write sector calls what *kind* of read or write is happening (used by block/deblock BIOS code). There's no reason that the BDOS couldn't call the BIOS to inform it that it should secure the drive heads. Similarly, the BDOS could inform the BIOS of any open files; i.e., when it's safe to change disks. I have a BIOS that can detect disk changes (it polls the write-protect sensor on 5.25" drives), but I can't do anything with the information. On DX85M, we flashed a message on the screen and waited for the user to replace the disk if there were files open for write/modify access. That awful "BDOS ERR: R/O" really threw users for a loop. While CP/M 1.4 was adequate for simple MDS systems, I didn't see that much progress in accommodating newer hardware and bullet-proofing in later versions. I thought it was remarkable that DRI never bothered to move the location of the second default FCB after the introduction of the Z80. It made life interesting if your system used the Z80 TRAP interrupt for anything. My list is very long... --Chuck P.S. Were there any x80 systems that attempted to implement paged virtual memory?

On 8/22/12 9:49 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: They mostly hang out on comp.os.cpm and the N8VEM mailing list.

On 23/08/2012, at 2:32 PM, mcguire at neurotica.com wrote: Indeed. Compared to other CP/M portables (like the Osborne), the Kaypros were very well made and easy to work on. No crappy plastic parts. My favourite CP/M machine, well that I own anyway.. Chris

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, mcguire at neurotica.com wrote: I've got a pair of 1200 baud internal Hayes compatible smartmodems you might be interested in. I'd love to find one of those add-on boards that would allow IDE or CF to be used - the HD in my 10 isn't going to last forever. :( g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Dave McGuire wrote: Email me with your address and I'll ship one off to you. The modem board itself is attached to the bottom of the main logic board via double-sided foam tape. The modem connects to the Kaypro via a ribbon cable and a tiny daughterboard that plugs into the sockets used for the 1488/1489 line drivers on the main logic board. The removed line drivers then plug into the top of the daughterboard. It lets you use the serial port in kind of a pass-through fashion I think. The only thing I found on the net about them was an old Infoworld review - they sold for an absolutely ungodly amount. Is anyone selling them? I like the KayPLUS ROM. It seems to add a number of nice features to the system. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012, Dave McGuire wrote: It is if you've got time to mess with it. I need something I can just drop into the box and go. I like the screen blanking for one - it also supports 3.5" drives, but I haven't had a chance to mess with that yet. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2012, mc68010 wrote: The Kaypro case looked too "homemade" for some people. The Osborne changed THAT. Why didn't the Otrona catch on? Charlie Chaplin [clone] carrying a table with computer down stairs wasn't enough?

On 08/23/2012 01:06 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: Osborne was first, smaller and had a 5" screen. Kaypro was later, had better screen, keyboard, more IO, and generally better. I'd agree the Darth Vader lunch box look as less than kool but it was durable. Allison

I didn't get a KB cable with this one. Well, I don't have it now. What did it look like? Paxton Hoag wrote:

On 08/23/2012 01:19 AM, Paxton Hoag wrote: I have 3 kaypros [ a 2, II and a 4/84] and all were pickups for free. Good machines all and the 4/84 has Advent turborom, handyman rom, 1mb ramdisk, and the Advent personality board. All that in the 4/84 makes it the most useful of the group and the fastest. I still use the 4/84 along with my AmproLB+ and the hot rodded NS* S100 machine. Allison

On 08/23/2012 02:10 PM, Eric Smith wrote: Advent Turborom, was an improved BOOT/bios with extensions for more and different drives. The advent personality board was an option that allowed the Tubrorom code to handle different drives than stock Kaypro had and allowed for up to 4. Standard drives were 2x 5.25" two side 40track and held about 360KB. Mine has 80 track 2side (fd55gfr) 5.25" for about 780K per drive. I went further to have one stock drive, and one fd55GFR plus added a 3.5" 80track (same interface as 5,25" 80track) one on the panel and one internal (default boot drive and utilities). By doing that It allowed me more general mass storage something very handy when using CP/M with lots of tools. That gave me 3x 780K +360K plus the 1MB ramdisk made the system very handy and useful. (using the ram disk for complies or assembles was way faster than floppy). Handyman was a calc, calender, mini editor, and a card file database that could be brought up at any time even during a CP/M utility or ap like multiplan or other editor. People liked the Keypro as it was CP/M giving access to a huge pool of free and inexpensive software and tools plus it was easily added onto. Add on items included hard disks, and other very desirable system hardware. Allison.