Re: Z80 Card for Apple //e

[Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@gmail.com>]

Bill Buckels wrote:

> Yeah, and I also noticed that a real Microsoft Softcard sells for much more, 
> which is what enticed me to gamble.
>
> Strangely, I goggled "Z-80 Expander" and got vitually no info. I's as if 
> this never existed so I'll just wait and see what I get. Thanks for the info 
> on this and of course the history lesson:) which is very much appreciated.
>
> I'll post a description of what I receive and a synopsis of how it works and 
> what steps I take to get this all together and put some diskimages online 
> after it's up and running. Provided I don't get ripped-off...

Although a quasi-standard (and much cloned) these are slow and not terribly 
flexible in terms of hardware support.  Keep your eyes open for a MicroPro 
StarCard (aka PCPI Applicard).  They used to be quite common.  It's about 3x 
faster and has drivers available for a large number of 3rd party storage and 
expansion cards (some written by yours truly).  In particular, I wrote a 
package called ProPartition that let's you allocate a virtual partition in a 
ProDOS volume for use by CP/M.

I use this here to setup a CP/M area on my CF card, but it will support 
absolutely any ProDOS block device.

Steve