Re: More fun with Freed Z80

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Feb 16, 12:20 pm, Steven Hirsch <snhir...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Intersesting... What's the status of this? I've yet to put my board
> > together, but I do prefer the idea of running it from ProDOS
>
> I'm busy trying to piece together what I did to make that work.  It was done
> as proof-of-concept for the CardZ180 project and never really polished up.
> Instead of writing to the boot tracks of the disk, the setup program created a
> DRIVERS file and a relocated PCPICPM.SYS.  You copy them to a ProDOS boot disk
> (using a disk transfer utility to bootstrap yourself) and startup from there.
>   The PCPI 6502 BIOS basically runs as a ProDOS SYSTEM program and, once
> running, can use the filesystem services to better support transfer between
> CP/M and ProDOS.  I have a utility called pdosxfer that's use to move things
> back and forth.

So the CP/M CBIOS is implemented in 6502, and on the Z80 side there's
a "proxy" CBIOS that delegates this responsiblity back to the Apple II
host ?

I'd be interested in being able to use CP/M image files (hosted on a
ProDOS volume) as the actual "disk", rather than a partition or other
raw ProDOS device. This is similar to how I still run Apple Pascal -
using a hacked version of the Pascal Profile Manager that Willi and I
nutted out a few years back.

> The transfer program for the CardZ180 would preserve time and date stamps
> between the two environments when the Z80 side was running an OS that
> supported them (Z-System and/or DateStamper).  Not sure if that feature was
> ever working with the Applicard.  There's enough similarity between them that
> a port would be possible, I'm sure.
>
> It's been over 20 years since I've laid eyes on the code. Originally it used a
> home-spun patching program to modify a users operating system files.  At this
> point in time, I'll just distribute the pre-patched code if I can get things
> working.
>
> >> I have the USB interface and 20Mhz. crystal already.  The 20Mhz. Z80 and PLDs
> >> should be here Monday.
>
> > It's tempting, but I'm worried that at 20Mhz, I might leave the II in
> > Z80 mode all the time ;-)
>
> If you have an accelerator on the A2 side, it's even more impressive!  This
> type of Z80 card can run just fine with accelerated 2e and 2GS systems.

Indeed I do Zip, Fast storage, RamWorks, Ultraterm is my II(e)
configuration of choice :-)