Z80 Card for Apple //e

["Bill Buckels" <bbuckels@mts.net>]

I just purchased a Z80 card for my Apple //e on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370087641561&ssPageName=ADME:B:EF:US:1123

The seller has 6 available and the price of 24.99 seems really fair 
especially for a new card.

ftp.apple.asimov.net has a large cpm section and includes the softcard disk 
image.

For Apple owners this would seem to be the lowest cost cpm system available 
for mucking with stuff like Aztec C's Z80 compiler etc. If you have a CF 
drive like I do on your Apple II and use ciderpress on Windows XP, since 
CP/M on the Apple II uses a DOS ordered disk image, moving CP/M programs to 
the apple using "sneaker net" seems to be one of the simpler things in the 
world of vintage computing.

Is there anything I should know in addition to the following... (see below)

Bill

x--- snip ---x

Microsoft's first hardware product was the Softcard, a Z80 coprocessor card 
that allowed the CP/M operating system to be run on an Apple II. CP/M (which 
stands for Control Program/Microprocessors, Control Program/Monitor or 
Control Program for Microcomputers, depending on who you ask) was a popular 
OS for Intel 8080/Zilog Z80 based systems, and ran on many early 
microcomputers. It was written in the late 1970's by Gary Kildall, founder 
of Digital Research, Inc.

The Softcard let the Apple II user tap into a large library of popular 
software that was only available for CP/M at the time such as Wordstar, 
Turbo Pascal, and dBase. Microsoft also sold several programming languages 
that ran under CP/M, including BASIC, COBOL, and FORTRAN.

The Softcard did not have any memory on it, and instead used the memory 
installed in the Apple II. It was compatible with most of the standard Apple 
II expansion cards, such as 80-column video cards, printer cards, serial 
cards, but they had to be installed in certain slots. Generally, if the 
Apple II configuration worked with Apple Pascal, it would work with CP/M.

The four DIP switches on the card should all be in the down (OFF) position. 
No other configuration is necessary. Once the card is installed in an unused 
expansion slot, usually slot 4 or 7, booting an Apple CP/M disk will utilize 
the Z80 processor on the card. CP/M version 2.2 is supplied on the system 
disk included with the Softcard. Several standard CP/M file utilities are 
included, such as format, copy, ed, and PIP, a file & disk utility. The 
system disk also holds two versions of BASIC. MBASIC is Microsoft's standard 
BASIC for CP/M. GBASIC includes extensions to make use of the Apple II's 
graphics ability. There is also a progam called APDOS that copies files from 
Apple DOS diskettes to Apple CP/M diskettes.

Most other Z80 cards made for the Apple II were clones of the Softcard, 
although there were some exceptions.