CP/M beginner- where to start?

[tezza]

But if you want to run CP/M-80, you could hardly do worse than a later system with hi-res graphics and lots of memory, say, like a Sharp MZ2500 or MZ2800. For a friendly system, I like the Epson QX-10. Not just a simple Z80 box with some generic software thrown in, but a system with some thought put into it.

Yes, I'm thinking of adding an Epson QX-10 to my (now very short) wanted list. I remember seeing them in the day and thinking they were a beautiful machine.

The Japanese CP/M'ers are a line of computers a lot of people forget about, but there was some nice work there. I've decided I really need an example of one.

Tez

 

[Chuck(G)]

Another Japanese line that many people are completely ignorant about was the great line of 6809-based professional systems by Fujitsu. No CoCo, they.

 

[commodorejohn]

For Japanese machines there's also MSX-DOS, which is basically CP/M with FAT12 support and a few other niceties. Kinda hard to get ahold of the hardware, though...

 

[arfink]

Wow, thanks for the input. I'll probably mess with it slightly in emulator, then look at getting a softcard for my IIgs probably. My next question would be, what's some good software to play with? :D

 

[ahm]

what's some good software to play with? :D

Get a copy of the Walnut Creek CP/M CDROM.
It contains "Over 19,000 text, source and excutable files for the CP/M operating system".

Cheers,
Andy

 

[Dwight Elvey]

Hi
I noticed in an earlier post that it is always assumed that one
needs a boot ROM. The machine I have has no boot ROM, in fact,
I have no system ROM at all. It has 100% 64K RAM( no shadowing ).
It has a floppy controller that DMAs a boot track into RAM on
reset. It runs CP/M just fine. It is an IMSAI box with a Digital System
disk interface.
Dwight

 

[tingo]

Dwight: how does your machine boot then? It must have a "hardware loader" in it somewhere? On the disk controller perhaps?

 

[glitch]

Dwight: how does your machine boot then? It must have a "hardware loader" in it somewhere? On the disk controller perhaps?

My Cromemco 4FDC (and the rest of the *FDC line) has a boot ROM on board. It uses the /Phantom line to keep any conflicting RAM boards from responding to its range. What actually keeps this from occupying 1K of the system RAM is that a write to a control port disables the ROM and the /Phantom assert.

Dwight, if your controller is doing DMA, is it halting the system processor and taking control of the address and data buses, writing the boot track into RAM, and then resetting the system processor and giving it control?