Fwd: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Jim Manley]

[ Accidentally only sent to Eric originally ]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 3:41 PM Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
>> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
>> computer
>
>
> It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
>

Eric,

I'm going to stand by my assertion that the Softcard was a single-board
computer on the technicality that it did have its own RAM - you apparently
forget that registers are a form of RAM - HA!  They're memory, they're
addressed over a bus (that just happens to be within the microprocessor),
and you can directly access any register at any time (random access).  As
for I/O, that's what the Apple ][ bus was for, right?  As Opus from Bloom
County, among other comic characters, was known to utter,
"PBBBBBBTTTTTT!!! 😜

Microsoft did offer a RAM expansion board specifically to allow the
Softcard to access 64K of RAM dedicated to CP/M, and the Premium Softcard
//e provided on-board RAM to CP/M for the Apple //e, as you noted.  All
models of the Softcard could output 80 x 24 text, not only through
third-party cards, but Apple's own 64K RAM and 80 x 24 video combo card,
which was often offered in packages, especially through dealers that
supported business customers (that's how my system came delivered).  The
"etc." I mentioned was the functionality provided through the glueware
logic on the Softcard that enabled RAM and 80 x 24 text output, as well as
other I/O over the Apple ][ slots bus.

When I was in the Navy, our ship called at HMS Tamar in Hong Kong, and I
followed verbal directions (26 stops on the then-new subway under the
harbor into the New Territories) to the basement level of a shopping
center.  There, I found clones of everything from Apple ][s and //es to
every expansion board and peripheral available in the early 1980s,
including both the original Softcard and the Premium Softcard //e.
Everything came complete with the floppy disks and every page of the
documentation, not just photocopied, but professionally typeset and
offset-printed.

In your missing-the-forest-for-the-trees response, you completely missed
the point of my post - that the Softcard was an extremely important early
product for Microsoft, the critical connection between the Softcard and the
QDOS prototype for x86 MS/PC-DOS, through Seattle Computer Products, and
that the number of CP/M licenses was much larger on Apple computers than
S-100 systems.

For those that cited the Amstrad systems, I was referring to the S-100 and
Softcard timeframe.  CP/M was only provided with the Amstrad CPC664 and
6128 floppy-disk based models, and the DDI-1 disk expansion unit for the
464 (only CP/M 2.2 with the 664, and 2.2 and 3.1 with the 6128).  The
Amstrads came along four years after the Softcard was introduced, and three
years after the release of the IBM PC.  By that time, Digital Research's
influence had faded into insignificance, despite the full release of
CP/M-86 within six months of the IBM PC's debut (albeit at six times the
price of MS/PC-DOS).  I do know that CP/M was used in European banking
systems well into the late 1990s, mostly because it wasn't broken and
didn't need to be "fixed".  It probably would have remained in use well
past 1999 if it weren't for Y2K's impetus for massive upgrades to current
technology for 2000 and beyond.

All the Best,
Jim


On Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 3:41 PM Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 20, 2018, 01:46 Jim Manley via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
>> The Softcard was a Z-80 based single-board
>> computer
>
>
> It wasn't. It was only a processor card.
>
> that plugged into an Apple ][ slot, equipped with its own
>> 80x24 character x line black-and-white video output,
>
>
> No version of the Softcard had it's own video output. It used normal Apple
> video  output. If you wanted 80x24, you had to use a separate third-party
> 80-column card, or (later) and Apple IIe, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs.
>
> RAM, etc.,
>>
>
> I'm not sure what you're referring to by "etc.", but the vast majority of
> Softcards and their clones did not have their own RAM, and used that of the
> Apple II.
>
> The PCPI Applicard and it's clones had their own RAM. Some very late
> models of the Softcard had their own RAM.
>
>