CP/M?

[galaga]

looks cool is there a pic of the dev board??? please

[Toolkitman]

This is Great!
It will need an add on card?
it will be released in kit or built?

[mlukasek]

NICE! Congratulation! I can't wait for release.

[vbriel]

This will be an add on board. It will stack on top of the mainboard. It uses a CPU to act as the disk controller and 2 large RAM chips that act like 2 disk drives. Garry already has many features finished including loading and storing disk images from SD card to the RAM card. He is now working to make a custom CP/M bios that will support 512K drives to get maximum space with the RAM chips. I'm currently working on the battery backed portion to increase/retain the data.

The board will be available in both kit and assembled and I will try to post a picture soon, but my internet has been horrible.

Vince

[elchucko]

Vince,

Will I be able to use the add-on PCB with Terminal V4 Firmware 1? I have not been able to update to the latest Terminal and CPU firmware.

Thanks
Chuck

[vbriel]

Anybody who has less than V4.14 of the firmware will need a chip reprogrammed. I will probably just send one with a RAM drive board if you need one.

[vbriel]

Here's a current picture of the prototype. This is not exactly how the final version will look as some board cuts are being made to fit around the front cables better.

[galaga]

wow very very cool the layout look prefect.. and room for more hehe buy two card's and have 4 disk's
but the battery makes me nervous (to many old PCB repairs) is the volt drop to high for a cr2032???
(i'll just put it off the pcb)

[Toolkitman]

Wow! I want it!
How much it will costs?

[vbriel]

Ok, the battery is probably being changed to a small holder for 3 AA size NiMH batteries. This will give the user the ability to use his own batteries that you may have just laying around. I might offer batteries but shipping batteries is not fun. 2000mah batteries (I found a 4 pack of NiMH batteries for under $10. This would give around 30-50 days of battery life on the RAM chips.

The case for batteries I just ordered and can probably be attached with double stick tape.

Vince

[vbriel]

Busy times but just enough time for an update. I like the 3 cell AA NiMH setup much better. The lifespan is over 30 days powered off and it is just much much better. Anyways, more good news as Garry Jordan has 3 new programs written that allow you to do a DIR of the SD card from CP/M and load/store files to/from CP/M - SD card. He has been the guy doing all the programming for the disk controller.

The programs are very nice programs that allow you to copy over and run Wordstar this morning! Life is good. I need to go to the CP/M repository and get some programs to run! I'm open to people posting links of files to test. Prefer .COM files not .dsk images right now.

Vince

[hal2710]

Hi Vince,

I'm loving this thread...............

As requested have a go at this please :-

http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/zork123_80.zip

Lost most of my youth to gaming and this is where it began for me !


Mick

PS Put me down for one of these Addon Boards. Cash Waiting

[vbriel]

So far I've imported Colassal Cave (Adventure 330pt version), DBASE II and some other small stuff. All programs appear to work great! I already have Zork, but I did want the 3 game set on one disk so thanks.

Vince

[galaga]

how's the +5v regulator it must be getting a little hot?

[elchucko]

Hi Vince,
Any update on this project? Thanks!