Re: What Flavor is the N8VEM?

["James Moxham (Dr_Acula)" <mox...@internode.on.net>]

Dunno?

Vanilla maybe.

Let's say a Kaypro was Chocolate and an Osborne was Strawberry. Each
of those had their own specific drivers for the display etc.

But there were generic CP/M machines too, that talked to standalone
terminals like WYSE ones. Eg I had one called the little big board
which was a smaller version of the big board. Because these machines
(like the N8VEM) were vanilla, the code was more portable. Most of the
altair stuff runs fine on the N8VEM for instance. Some of the microbee
stuff doesn't run on the N8VEM. But I'll bet the text programs for the
N8VEM would run on the microbee.

The differences between all the machines would be with the displays.
Printing should be generic because that goes through CP/M. But the
pokes and OUT statements on the N8VEM that talk to the uart and the
8255 - they are machine specific. Code like that ought to include the
source as well as the compiled version so others can see how it works.
I have no idea for instance how a Kaypro changes its baud rate.

Leaving aside baud rate changes, I suspect most of the other
differences between machines will be with the display drivers. I guess
over time we will find what works and what doesn't and maybe collect
all the working stuff and put it in the wiki.