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Zenith Z-100 Gaming Find

ECNeilson

Member
Joined
Jul 21, 2014
Messages
47
Location
Dallas, TX
Greetings and Happy New Year, Z-100 Brothers!

Why not meet the new year with some authentic Avalon Hill games released specifically for the Z-100 platform! The Z-100 software archives now contain four classic Avalon Hill games that were ported to the Z-100 series CP/M platform:

Stocks & Bonds
Football Strategy
Telengard – love this game!
B-1 Nuclear Bomber

More details are on my website: http://planemo.org/retro/z-100-gaming-find/

Enjoy,
ECNeilson
 
Thanks for sharing. And very awesome work with the manuals! Is there any chance you might consider dumping your disks using a Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, or at least ImageDisk? For some folks it may be much easier to just crank out a fresh disk using one of these tools, rather then messing with a serial port or some other tool to import the files on to a disk. Those would also be easier to use under an emulator, should a Z-100 emulator ever be completed. And in the case of DOS software, it would preserve file date stamps. Of course, in the case of cross-platform CP/M binaries it is useful to also have an archive of just the files as a different vendors system would probably not use the same disk layout.
 
Thanks Mr. Neilson, great website resource !!
I second SomeGuy's request for disk images. So far, that's how I've gotten software on my Z100. ImageDisk and TeleDisk are my best friends. One of these days, I'll get serial transfer to work. I know the ports are good.
Again, thanks for making Z100 stuff available !!

PS - now I have to get color going on this thing ...

Larry G
 
Glad you like the archive. I just did a re-org of it to make things a little easier to sort through. Most of the critical 5 1/4" system disks now have ImageDisk versions and are in the repository. I'll IMD some of the other disks like the games in the future. I don't yet have a method to ImageDisk the 8" floppies. I've been on the lookout for a Compaticard for doing just this.

Update: I've IMD'd the four games and added them to the respective .zip files on the repository.
 
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You have 8" floppies for the Z100 ? What titles ? I have an 8" on mine which is running very well now. I can even boot ZDOS from it. What came on 8" ?
If you can find an Adaptec SCSI card like the AHA-1542 ISA bus card, a cable can be hard wired to an 8" drive to read/write with ImageDisk on an MSDOS pc.
Mine images very well with that card. Can't wait to check out the game images.

Larry G
 
You have 8" floppies for the Z100 ? What titles ?

I have about 100 8" floppies, including a few originals like WordStar, Aztec C, and CP/M 3.0. I've archived the contents of all of the 8" disks online since most of the files were size-agnostic, but there are a few things like Concurrent DOS and CP/M 3.0 that need ImageDisking to preserver their boot ability - especially the Concurrent DOS. I've never seen that anywhere for Z-100.

Thanks for the Adaptec card tip. That looks promising.

Eric
 
I've read that Concurrent DOS was made for the Z-100 so have been looking for it. I have C-DOS for my CompuPro which works good on 8" media.

Larry G
 
I followed this diagram here:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/cnct.htm
Except for DS1, I connected 14 to 26 NOT 12 to 26
I did not use TG43, just left open.
Also, the odd pins on both the 50 and 34 pin connectors are ground, so each odd pin adjacent to a used even pin of the 34 pin connector I soldered to the corresponding adjacent odd pin of the 50.
Make sense ? In other words, each signal wire had a paired ground wire for noise stability.
This has worked flawless with my drive, an NEC FD1165.
The cable ended up ugly as sin but since it worked great, I didn't touch it :p

Larry G
 
I followed this diagram here:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/cnct.htm
Except for DS1, I connected 14 to 26 NOT 12 to 26
I did not use TG43, just left open.
Also, the odd pins on both the 50 and 34 pin connectors are ground, so each odd pin adjacent to a used even pin of the 34 pin connector I soldered to the corresponding adjacent odd pin of the 50.
Make sense ? In other words, each signal wire had a paired ground wire for noise stability.
This has worked flawless with my drive, an NEC FD1165.
The cable ended up ugly as sin but since it worked great, I didn't touch it :p

Larry G

THX. But then you're actually using a "standard" ISA 5.25" floppy controller, not a SCSI controller like the AHA-1542 that you originally wrote? That's the part that confuses me!
 
The "SCSI" part is irrelevant. It just happens that Adaptec AHA-1542 series cards with the National Semiconductor (Not Intel) FDC chip pass all TESTFDC tests (supports FM encoding and 128-byte MFM sectors) and these cards are easy to find. With other cards or motherboard chip sets, those two abilities are hit-and-miss and more miss than hit.
 
>hit-and-miss and more miss than hit

Yea, sorry for any confusion. Yes, it is the floppy controller of the card. I researched this a while ago, and had several cards with chips that supposedly would work but found one "hit" after about three "misses" :p

Larry G
 
The 1542 tested there would have had an intel FDC chip. Some AHA-1542s were manufactured with the crappy intel chip while others were made with the National Semiconductor chip. The ones with the National Semiconductor chip will pass all tests.

So if you go on eBay and buy an AHA-1542, look closely at the FDC chip. Adaptec put their own stickers on them, but if you see a big "i" logo sticking out, then you should pass on it and if you see a swirly "N" logo, then it is good (also make sure the seller is showing a photo of the actual card).

I'm not sure if the 1522 suffered from the same part inconstancy. It looks like the one they tested in that list was a National Semiconductor chip. Also, some earlier intel chips would actually pass that test.
 
No mine is a AHA-1542CP written on the card but like SomeGuy said, what is important is the floppy controller chip. I'm not home to see what # my floppy chip is. I'll post a photo.
I just played the hand I was dealt, as they say, trying the cards I had. I read a tip somewhere that the Adaptec cards worked which made me try it. I'll post the chip# when I get home.
Like I said, every image I've made has worked just fine which is how I got my CompuPro to boot and could read an SCP 86-DOS disk I posted about recently. I didn't do extensive testing.
I guess we're off topic here so maybe I'll start a new thread. If I post a photo of my atrocious cable, I'll include a warning about graphic content :p

PS - I missed SomeGuy's previous post

Larry G
 
As far as cabling for the 5 1/4" to 8" drive, don't forget the FDADAP card from DBIT:

http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html

Don't have to have a bird's nest of wires and works quite well. This has been discussed several times in the past.

Edit: Some of our members not familiar with the Zenith models may get confused about what a model Z-100 is. The Z-100 referred to here is a dual processor computer that will run CP/M "or" a version of MS/DOS that is not IBM PC compatible.
Zenith also manufactured PC compatibles also referred to as the Z-100 that are IBM PC compatible. Confusing?
 
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> a bird's nest of wires

What ? Bird's nest ??? It's a work of art !!
floppy8_cable.jpg
Here's my floppy card. I'm not even sure which is the floppy controller chip.
adaptec.jpg
Yes, I've seen the dbit card in use - very nice. I probably spent way more than $40 labor on my artwork :p

Larry G
 
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