On 4/24/07, Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Since a bit of the requirements of such a system
turn on the
applications' needs more than the operating system's needs, I can
throw into the mix that the things I'd probably most likely try to run
would be some flavor of BASIC, Wordstar, an Infocom engine, and most
likely a Scott Adams/Adventure International engine - pretty much the
sort of stuff I would have run in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s
if I'd had a CP/M system of my own. I'd say that a few hundred K of
removable storage and a 64 or 80-char-wide screen should take care of
all of those.
Infocom games are 80x24 for best results.
80x50 is even better ;-)
I've played on 40x25 for many hours - not as much fun, and there's at
least one puzzle I can think of that's harder than intended when some
formatted text wraps on a 40-col machine, obscuring a major clue.
I've ported a Z-Machine to the VIC-20 - 22x23 "works" but is seriously
unpleasant.
For storage i'd advise at
least a 360k floppy (if you r doing floppy) as anything smaller is cramped.
CP/M programs and stuff bit larger (around 512k) storage systems easier.
I wasn't planning on rotating media - I was thinking about ROM disks
and CF, perhaps with a 512K SRAM block-mapped for volatile storage (I
have the 512K chips here in my junkbox already - no need to send out).
the best example I give for that is:
Basic system, PIP ED,STAT, ASM, DDT, LOAD plus the CP/M BDOS assemble
and edit on one drive and between the .bak, Hex, OBJ, PRN you can easily
fill a 360k disk and then some.
Those all sound familiar.
So for storage (floppy) I always advise TEAC55F (or
GFR strapped for 300rpm)
to get two side 80tracks and about 720/780k formatted. Or a 720K 3.5" floppy.
IDE disk makes the space issue go away as 8mb is a large drive for CP/M.
If I were going to go the route of 5.25" media, I would almost
certainly use a TEAC FD55GFR since I have more than one in my DEC
pile. If I were going to go with 3.5", the options there are
limitless for the foreseeable future. I'm still looking towards
non-rotating media, however.
Thanks for all the input,
-ethan