Re: CP/M (Z80) specific software for Apple II?

[Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com>]

<drhirudo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> The latest version of AppleWin has emulation for Microsoft CP/M SoftCard,
> which is very nice addition.
> So far I managed to find and boot CP/M and it works fine. The GBASIC
> seems to support the Apple II graphics modes and probably other Apple II specific features.
> 
> I remember having back in 1992 a CP/M SoftCard clone but I abandonned it
> fast and sold it, because most of the software I had was Word Processors
> and DataBases in text modes. I remember business used the Z80 card a lot
> and mostly ignored the 6502 software. The Apple II owners instead of
> buying new computer, bought Z80 card and used the business software for CP/M.

In fact, the Apple II with a Softcard became the most popular platform for
running CP/M!

> So my question is - is there any CP/M (Z80) software that utilizes the
> Apple II sound, graphics and input capabilities (Joystick, Tape). I would
> love to see the games/applications that I wasn't able to run until now,
> because they required Z80. I know using Apple II features makes the
> specific CP/M software unusable on other CP/M configurations, because
> CP/M used text terminal for portability, but still there are may be some
> software written for this combination, except the MBASIC and GBASIC
> available on the CPM boot disk.

Except for text-oriented games, I think you'll find that the CP/M landscape
was not arcade oriented. ;-)

Since the Apple II was the only widely sold CP/M platform with game
graphics capabilities, and since non-CP/M Apples were a much larger market,
there was no incentive to develop graphical games for the Apple that
depended on the Softcard. In addition, the 6502 was faster than the
Softcard Z80. 

> P.S. Video of me running CP/M - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g


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-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon