Re: The Internet-enabled Contiki Desktop OS

[steve@dosius.zzn.com (Dosius)]

Yves McDonald <""yves.mcdonald\"@NO SPAM sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:<JUrca.8479$VT.947854@news20.bellglobal.com>...
> desiv wrote:
> > I'm looking at my Coleco Adam sitting underneath my Apple //e, and I'm
> > thinking he might get even more jealous...
> 
> 
> snip!
> 
> 
> > Interesting side note, if a Z80 port is viable, what would that mean for an
> > Apple II with a CPM card??  Run 2 versions?  6502 and Z80?  What about some
> > of the other Z80 boxes out there???
> > 
> > Might be beyond me, but still interesting...
> > 
> I studied how the Z80 softcard works many years ago and I think the 6502 
> was halted while the Z80 was working.  The Apple' 6502 would 'wake up' 
> to perform I/O and for short periods of time to refresh its  registers 
> which were built like dynamic RAM (needs refresh or it loses addresses 
> for program counter and stack pointer!)  In short, it was one processor 
> at a time, plus they shared the same RAM.

Yes.  I tried to emulate one of these.

> The memory map for the Z80 was all mixed up compared to the 6502 map to 
> re-create the memory map of a CP/M system.

Really freaky. ;)  It was like 0000H->$1000, B000H->$D000,
E000H->$C000, F000H->$0000 or something like that.

> CP/M wasn't offering much service: serial and disk I/O (through BDOS) 
> and a return-to-OS system call.  Since CP/M offers I/O, I guess it 
> wouldn't be too difficult to make Contiki use them.
> 
> My first C programs were done under CP/M with BDS-C (that's stands for 
> Brain Damage Software).  

BDS acronym <- !!!

> The BDS-C author made is compiler sources open 
> to public.  All in Z80 assembler: amazing!

;)

> 
> Bringing CP/M to the Internet age: what a mad concept!   Just like 
> riding a donkey on the freeway :).
> 
> cheers!
> 
> Yves

Hey, I'd like to do some CP/M-86 hacking...I'm working on some
cross-compile hacks with Turbo C++ 1.01.  Ideas?  :D

-uso.