Re: Homebuilt z80 card for the ][?

[Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com>]

Bill H wrote:
> Has anyone ever tried to make a home built Z80 card for the ][ to run
> Cp/m?

I've got such a card, though I didn't build it myself.  I picked it up in
a surplus store out of a pile of junk, because even though it was a
wire-wrapped card, I recognized instantly that it was a clone of the
Microsoft Z-80 Softcard.  There were even some handwritten notes about
the layout, and a photocopy of the Softcard schematic with the signals
highlighted as they were wrapped.

I wire-wrapped some custom Apple II cards back in 1977-1983, but I never
built a clone of an existing product.  I knew other people that did,
including one person that wire-wrapped his own motherboard.

By 1982, there were many companies selling inexpensive clones of common
cards as kits, bare PCBs, or fully assembled, so it would no longer
have made sense to make your own unless you wanted to change the design
in some way.

Eric