Re: Z80 card?

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.1000413173655.4196D-100000@merrill.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Michael Lam  <wy2lam@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Ruud Dingemans wrote:
> 
>>> On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Ruud Dingemans wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Found this old II card, it's probably a CP/M board, as it has a Z80
>>>> cpu on it... It reads "A()SOE (soft) card"... Anybody know
>>
>>> I had one of those.  It is to be used with the CP/M software (the most
>>> recent one I've used, about 9 or 10 years ago, was version 2.2 IIRC).
>>> It uses a different disk format but if you put a disk inside your boot
>>> drive it just boots
>>
>> Ok Michael, thanks. Anybody know if these (special) disks are around
>> somewhere?
> 
> Hm...unfortunately my family ditched the sysetm during a move (have to check
> that)...those special disks is really nothing that special...considering the
> very limited amount of software available on that format (IIRC, the only use
> for CP/M back then was to start WordStar and MultiPlan).
> 
> If you have AppleWorks then the card is pretty useless.  Correct me if I'm
> wrong tho.
 
You are wrong.
 
There were plenty of software for CP/M back then, so much that in the
early 1980'es I made CP/M my preferred OS for the Apple II, even
though I rarely ran WordStar and I never ran MultiPlan.  Getting the
CP/M software to the special Apple II disk format was of course a
problem.  For some years, Lifeboat delivered CP/M software on Apple
II compatible 5.25" disks.  Later I also had access to an Apple II
with 8" floppy drives added, which made it easy to transfer CP/M
software from standard 8" SSSD floppies to Apple II floppies.  In the
end I got a serial transfer program working on Apple II CP/M
(Kermit), which made it easy, albeit somewhat slow, to transfer files
to/from non-Apple CP/M systems as well as non-CP/M systems.
 
That was back in the 1980'ies.  Since Lifeboat no longer appears to
be in business and no-one else delivers Apple CP/M floppy disks, and
since 8" floppy drives aren't easy to get at, today the only
practical solution would be to get some kind of serial transfer to
work on the Apple.  Just as a lot of old Apple II software today is
available as freeware, there are also a lot of old CP/M software
available as freeware (Walnut Creek even sold a special CP/M CD-ROM
some 5-6 years ago).  To get this software onto the Apple II CP/M,
you really have two options:
 
1. Get a serial file transfer program working on your Apple CP/M
system.
 
2. Create disk images of Apple II CP/M disks on e.g. your PC, then
transfer the disk iamge to your Apple using e.g. ADT.
 
Each method has its own hassles.  In 1. you must learn the details of
your serial port and how it's accessed from your Apple CP/M system
(it's different on different Apple CP/M cards), but you don't have to
worry about the disk format.  In 2. you don't have to worry about
the serial port details from CP/M, but you must learn enough detail
about the CP/M disk format to be able to create a working CP/M disk
image, and how the CP/M disk format maps onto Apple II disks (the
interleaving of Apple CP/M disks are different from both Apple DOS
disks, Apple ProDOS disk and Apple Pascal disks).
 
======================================================================
 
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that there was much more to CP/M
than just WordStar and MultiPlan....
 
-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
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