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What is the best CP/M machine and why?

Chuck(G) said:
...included a copy of Uniform tailored to...
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I got a copy of Uniform tailored to the SB-180 and in 1986 found it more promise than deliver. I pulled the manual out last summer to see again if it would be of any use and punted it a second time. That's basically why I decided to do my own hardware/firmware solution for universal format instead of FDC bounded.

I recall that with SB-180 and with the drive types I used, the only thing I could match with my collection was Kaypro formats; something I could do with Ampro Little Boards without an application program. About all I could say for Uniform is that I liked their product graphics. :)

I'm not saying that Uniform wasn't wonderful for other systems. But for the SB-180, it really didn't offer any advantage for me.
 
Uniform (and UniDOS) got quite a bit better during its lifetime, but it dug pretty deep into MSDOS-version specific structures and it was a resident device driver set. It could get in the way. I mentioned it only in that it was bundled with the MatchPoint to handle Apple CP/M formats--something it did pretty well.

I suspect that very few people have heard of the Matchpoint PC.
 
Tiki-100 can support standard FM/MFM CP/M formats up to 2DD/800K and 250Kbps, including software sector-interleaved formats and formats starting on sector 0 (Kaypro). The people who developed this machine knew for sure they had to support as much CP/M software and formats as possible to even stand a chance.

Did all CP/M use FM/MFM, or did some of the Apple II versions use GCR?
 
per said:
Did all CP/M use FM/MFM, or did some of the Apple II versions use GCR?
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It depends entirely on the controller hardware. CP/M was very flexible, in that respect. The Apple II with a CP/M softcard does use GCR with the standard Disk II controller. Some early controllers, like the OSI 470 disk controller, were nothing more than a synchronous UART and a few parallel control lines. Basically, if someone could write a driver for the controller, you could make CP/M run with it.
 
Really, the disk encoding and format has little to do wither with CP/M or MSDOS. As glitch has mention, CP/M was extremely flexible.

And, so is MS-DOS. Consider, for example, the Sirius/Victor 9000. Runs both, with GCR zoned floppies.
 
What I mean is that the OS of Tiki-100 came with a tool that let people change the disk parameters easily, so they didn't have to write custom software to do so.
 
As a schoolboy in Australian in the 80s, my school had a computer lab consisting entirely of Microbee CP/M machines. Diskless Z80 32k ram workstations with green monochrome displays all linked to a fileserver that had a 5 Mb HDD and dual 5.25 floppies.

Oh, and the fileserver had a colour display. COLOUR!! O.O

Microbee was an Australian computer company and I don't know if those machines ever left our burnt horizons.

I remember thinking it was pretty cool. We learned to touch type on those bad boys. TypeQuick. Also WordStar!

I'm new and I should post an intro thread in the right place so apols if I've broken rules or such-like.
 
This discussion started with a parameter "retro" that has to be guessed at.

If you are looking at Z80 but not limited to a system that is physically old, then you might find the best performance options by putting together your own S100 bus system ( more retro than anything else discussed here so far). John Monahan's new DIY S100 boards offer many combinations of I/O, RAM, storage, and peripheral interfaces, with a range of CPU options. Kind of hotrod versions of the machines CP/M-80/86 was designed for. See s100computers.com site and the N8VEM project site for what's available.

But you might want to skip over the ones pushing S-100 into later *86 CPUs.

Rick
 
RickNel said:
This discussion started with a parameter "retro" that has to be guessed at.

If you are looking at Z80 but not limited to a system that is physically old, then you might find the best performance options by putting together your own S100 bus system ( more retro than anything else discussed here so far). John Monahan's new DIY S100 boards offer many combinations of I/O, RAM, storage, and peripheral interfaces, with a range of CPU options. Kind of hotrod versions of the machines CP/M-80/86 was designed for. See s100computers.com site and the N8VEM project site for what's available.

But you might want to skip over the ones pushing S-100 into later *86 CPUs.

Rick
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Does that mean my 100MHz 486 with CPM-86 installed doesn't count?:(
 
You'd have to tell us whether your CPM-86 can count or not.

I'm just recalling that the OP said, more than once, that he was looking for a Z80-based system. That's 8-bit. So that seems to be one factor in his paramater "retro". But the OP has been quiet for a while.. overwhelmed with options?

Rick
 
Nope, just waiting for you all to slug it out! :)

Z-80 only is correct. If you look at my earlier posts, the parameters are laid out.

I think S-100 machines will be out as they tend to be very expensive. At the moment, as I said, I have TRS80 Model 4 with Montezuma CP/M and supposedly a Superbrain QD on the way, but I'm not sure what has happened to it. I guess the Superbrain is a good 'un but I think it has no lower case descenders which might look odd, and it has no I/O whatsoever apart from a pretty meagre couple of serial ports. Yes, there is a bus inside, but provisioning some sort of HDD will be difficult.

So it either needs an interface built in, or should have something modern that's not too expensive.
 
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Interesting that all the discussion has been about computers in a box. Appliances as I refer to them. I thought the OP was inquiring as to the ultimate Z-80/CPM system. Which to me would be an S-100 based system. Yes, they were the most expensive, but they were/are the most flexible and expandable, and had more accessories and add-on available than any of the appliances that came later.

I am still running (on a daily basis as needed) a Compupro System that has parts that date back to the 1980s. I have Z-80B, Z-80H, 8085, 8088, 8086, 286, 68K main processors for it that I can swap in as necessary. The system also has Z-80H, 80186, and 8085 slave processors running all the time. It's set up to support up to eight users with up to four virtual screens each, right now with the 8085/8088 dual processor installed, I can boot CPM-80, CPM-86, MS-DOS, MPM-80, MPM-86, and Concurrent DOS from, 5.25". or 8" floppy drives, a hard drive, or a tape drive.

Can you do that with any of your appliances?
 
I don't think S-100 systems really caught on in Europe, and if you don't got one from back in the day it might be a bit of a hassle getting together just the right hardware/configuration you want.

Still, S-100 is problably the way to go if you want the absolute ultimate CP/M system.
 
"Best" from a technical standpoint probably would not be S100. STD, Eurocard or Multibus would be my vote. For a long time, S100 was viewed by industry as a "hobbyist" bus.

James has put together a very nice Eurocard system. Multibus systems abound and even extend to the early generation Sun systems.
 
"Best" for me has to be the Australian Microbee 128 Premium Plus. Has 1GB memory, Z80 @ 3.375, boots CP/M 2.2, ZCPR2, CP/M 3, (even uClinux) and all standard CP/M 80 software. Full colour with 512x256 graphics and clock. Boots from SD card or 3.5" 776kb Floppy. Latest Shell supports function keys, Icons for chick launch and mouse, see https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ht3b7rq9g8p5vh/microbee_shell.jpg?dl=0 There are Microbee Hard Drive models as well, but this one using the SD cards load everything faster anyway. Microbees were first released in 1982 but the company still exists and released the PP+ last year. Check out http://microbeetechnology.com.au/premiumpluskit.htm
 
S-100 is still probably the best solution for hobbyists as there are more S-100 boards around today (vintage and retro) and you can more easily fit together a personalized system to suit individual tastes without the burden of more sophisticated system drivers in more advanced buses.

My advice is that you look at all the vintage and retro systems that CP/M and MP/M can run on, and if you're still not happy... design your own single board computer (SBC). That's a lot easier today than in the early 80s due to PC CAD and more powerful chips, bigger memory, silicon storage, and little need of all the logic gates common in old designs.
 
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Chuck(G) said:
...Multibus systems abound and even extend to the early generation Sun systems.
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Multibus is nice; Proteon (now-defunct competitor to Cisco in the router space) made a nice 68020 on Multibus; early Cisco routers were also Multibus. Multibus was very well-designed for its time, and would be ideal for a stable platform.

Were there many Z80 Multibus cards available? I know Intel had an 8085 (I have one of those in a junk pile here), and there was at least one Z8002 board out there, but it would be interesting to see if anyone here has a CP/M Multibus system running.

To put it in PC-speak, S-100 was the VESA Local Bus of its day; PCI was more expensive but was the 'better' bus. (S-100 was the 8080 bus brought out to the card edge and Multibus was CPU-agnostic to a degree; VLB brought the '486 bus to the card edge and PCI is CPU-agnostic to a degree (the 486 and Pentium buses are quite different. There were attempts at doing VLB for Pentium (I had a Pentium 60 with three VLB slots years ago) but the performance was dismal)).
 
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lowen said:
Were there many Z80 Multibus cards available?
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Several, including Monolithic Systems, and National. There are some up on eBay if you search for Multibus Z80

I don't know how many had memory banking though, so getting CPM 3 going would be difficult.
 
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