On 4/24/07, Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: So far. Indeed. But the last 8080 I saw in the field was in a 1970s B&W video game. Those are somewhat common if you hang around DEC equipment. Don't know that one - what makes it special? These all look like Z80 descendents to me - I'd probably rarely, if ever, run across one to harvest. Since the Z80 was rather prolific, and should still be easy to obtain, either from junked equipment or just new for a couple of bucks from a place like BG Micro, what would be the appeal of an 8085? Just a variant on the theme, or is there something neat about it that warrants investigation? 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. Thanks for all the great details, Allison, -ethan