Home » RBC Forums » General Discussion » Now That I have my CP/M 68K board up and running, What Do I Do Now? (Never learned CP/M when it was new!)
| Now That I have my CP/M 68K board up and running, What Do I Do Now? [message #7563] |
Fri, 24 April 2020 20:19  |
computerdoc
Messages: 130
Registered: October 2015
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Senior Member |
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Hi CP/M 68K Enthusiasts!
Back in the day when I 1st heard of CP/M, though it interested me, I never was able to put a CP/M system together for the 8080 much less Z80 or 68K.
So my question is: Now that I have my Tiny68K and MB012 boards up and running, what do I do with it?
I know this group has a lot of CP/M users here.
My Background:
I have a strong hardware background with Motorola 8-bit microprocessors. I cut my microprocessor teeth on an MC6800 based ET-3400 Trainer back in college in the '79-'81 Technical College school year which I started when I was 19 years old. Man! I wish I knew then what
I know now about microprocessor electronics and building SBCs! We hand assembled our programs in class back then, entered them on a hex key pad into ram and executed them. That was the development cycle I had to work with. We had no permanent storage or printer of any kind. So remembering those programs was left to taking notes and those are prabably long gone now.
Needless to say, our programs in class were hand written in MC6800 Assembly Language and just very basic programs they were. No high level languages for sure, not even a BASIC Interpreter on there.
I don't remember ever getting much training in assembly language never mind training in various basic or advanced concepts & algorithms and we definitely did not learn any type of Disk Operating System because the college either didn't have the advanced Disk drive add-on or it had not been created yet for the ET-3400 though later on years later I heard a 6809 upgrade to the ET-3400 had been made as well as a mini disk drive unit. Microprocessor hardware and software training was quite basic back then - in SC anyway.
I had met a gentleman years before that when I was a kid who is a very dear friend of mine now that had Motorola Technical Databooks so I would read the microprocessor databook in my spare time over at his house for years passionately interested in building a 6800 single board computer eventually though I did not know what that was back then. I almost built a 6800 wirewrapped board with a DB25 RS-232C interface for a terminal with cassette I/O and a parallel port running the Mikbug monitor program for my final project, but it never got finished due to my low confidence level in my Microprocessor Electronics Knowledge and brand new wirewrapping techniques.
I don't know if I still have that board anymore, but I still would have liked to have finished that 6800 board and connect it up to 1 of 2 ASR-33 teletypes with paper tape reader and punch that I used to have. Paper tape was my storage system for a BASIC programming class in that same college though that is a story for another time. Anyway, I still would like to build an MC6802 or MC68HC11 sbc running Flex-02 or Flex-11 if there is such a thing. The 68HC11 has an extra index register if memory serves over the single index register version in the 6800/2/8 chips. I have been collecting many variations of the 68HC11 for years for just such a purpose!
After I found out about the 6809 in the Radio Shack Color Computer 1 (Coco 1) I had bought on sale, I had also wanted to eventually build an MC6809 system running Flex09, but the SWTPC computer systems were priced way out of my earning abilities. Thanks to an individual in this group I was able to procure 5 PCBs to make a 6809/6309 based Uniflex system which as I understand it is a multiuser / multitasking operating system like the OS-9 Disk Operating system I had running on my Coco system. Having these 5 PCBs to build a 6809 UNIFLEX system is a dream come true! Many thanks to that individual!
Many PCBs would be built and much practice creating 6809 based SBCs in Eagle Pro would take place bringing me up to the present day so no CP/M experience of any kind was never had.
Now my question is: How do I learn CP/M 68K style single user version on a Tiny68K or MB012 board SBC? All ideas, suggestions, software projects, etcetera would be most welcome from all of my microprocessor electronics buddies on this forum would be most welcome. Please be nice as I am mostly a hardware guy. I have some programming experience in the past in 8 different programming languages including 6800 assembly language, 8080 assembly language, very little C, C++ Compiler, Expect, Linux batch files, IBM JCL, RPG II, Dbase II, and of course several BASIC Interpreters over the years as well as ADA in the Air Force and a classified programming language for the computer on-board the AWACS E-3 aircraft.
So I have seen and used a lot, but again no CP/M of any kind ... until now.
How do I start programming in C on the Tiny68K and MB012 SBCs?
What software projects should I look into?
What C programming tutorals or training is available these days?
And most important:
What software is available for CP/M 68K that will run in a 16MBs of ram environment on a SBC system? I bet you all wish you had all that ram way back then?   
Any takers on these questions?
There are a lot of board builders here realizing now what they wished they could have had back then or did have back in the day and there are others who are building SBCs for the very 1st time. I think some sort of CP/M 68K and C training should be setup for us newbies to CP/M 68K.
What is the best way to learn proper C programming these days? I did get a copy of The Original C Programming Language book a few years back. I remember seeing it in the college library once or twice. Read about every issue of Byte magazine I could get my hands on, well much of the ads anyway back in the day when BYTE Magazine was HUGE!!! I loved reading the ads scoping to see what was available in the way of 6800 and 6809 computer systems!
Well, if you have read this far, you are at least as interested in the hardware and/or software aspects of and for microprocessor based SBCs as I am or more so.
Where Do I start?
What do you think?
Please, serious thoughts, suggests, ideas, etcetera are warmly welcomed! Take care my friends!
Kip
Computerdoc
Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc dot rr dot com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/User:Computerdoc
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