Re: program idea

[Dr_Acula <mox...@internode.on.net>]

First up, what an awesome project. I haven't seen the CPM source code
for many many years. Brings back fond memories!

Re storage, I'm wondering about an IDE interface. This website has a
schematic http://www.retroleum.co.uk/ide_interface.html  That project
seems to have evolved into a single board computer with mouse,
keyboard and graphics driver which is very impressive. But this
schematic shows how simple IDE interfacing can be.

IDE opens up two storage media. The first is old hard drives, and
everyone has a few of those lying around. And the second is using a
SDRAM card as used in cameras etc. There are SD ram to IDE adaptors on
ebay for $20, and the advantage of SD cards is the very low power
consumption.

Another link is http://www.oshonsoft.com/z80basiccompiler.html

I downloaded this basic compiler and turned it into a hex file in
under a minute.

So if coding is so easy, it could be quite possible to have proper
programs sitting on the CPM system - eg a comms program that links to
a .net program on a PC, and set up a link.

Another idea is a keyboard - Picaxe chips can handle PS/2 keyboard to
RS232 translation and if this board can handle RS232 it will work.

And finally, there are some great 20x4 character LCD displays on ebay
and these are very easy to interface with Z80 systems. Looking at the
screen shots of CPM in action, there is no reason this could not be on
a small display on the board.

Just some ideas. I'm as happy as a pig in mud seeing that CPM source
code!

James Moxham
Adelaide, Australia




On Jun 21, 11:25 am, jdavis <soupw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 20, 4:06 pm, lynchaj <lyn...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > The SBC CBIOS would be extended so that when the operator accesses the
> > "G:" drive, it knows that it passes its block device read/write
> > requests as a client to the PC program.
>
> > The PC program would use a disk image file as a remote CP/M disk
> > drive.
>
> That would be awesome and very useful.  You could pick some sort of
> standard disk image format to use on the PC side, so you wouldn't have
> to write all the disk image creation utilities.  If there's already an
> open source "std" cp/m disk image reader/writer library, then it
> shouldn't be too much trouble to adapt that to the serial line.
> Sounds like fun.
>
> jdavis