Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by david-given 1942 days ago
Hello, author here. Thanks for the interest. If anyone has a candidate machine they want to port it to, please file a Github issue and I'll try and support you --- it's supposed to be easy to port, with a turnkey build system which will build all the user programs, the CCP and BDOS, link everything together into a bootable image, etc.

I'm particularly interested in anyone who has actual open source CP/M software, or has non-open-source software they're willing to relicense. (I successfully persuaded R.T. Russell to open source his superb BBC Basic port, which is now included!) Most CP/M software predates the era when licenses were considered important, and generally has invalid or unusable licensing: you see the phrase 'public domain for non-commercial use' a lot... It's now old enough that the license holders are beginning to actually _die_, and great swathes of useful software and history are just vanishing. I'd love to preserve this stuff. Especially, I'd love to get my hands on an open source CP/M 3 clone: ZSDOS, which is what I currently have, is only CP/M 2.2 compatible and is missing several important features (such as the ability to change serial baud rate!).
2 comments
tyingq 1942 days ago
I have a question on that. Would CP/Mish be able to easily deal with arbitrary RAM location?

There's a really cool device called a Cidco Mailstation that has a Z80, but it maps a ROM to the first 16k of memory. So you can't easily run CP/M because it expects RAM there.

Would be a nice CP/Mish platform with its 128Kb RAM, loads of flash memory, 320x128 lcd, fairly simple bootstrap process, runs on 3 AAA batteries, etc.

More info: https://jcs.org/2019/05/03/mailstation

link
david-given 1942 days ago
Yes but no; yes in that you _can_ do that, no in that all available software has been built to assume that the base of memory at 0x0000. It can be done but there's probably not much point. Which is a shame as it's a really nice-looking machine...
link
tyingq 1942 days ago
Ah, well. Maybe I'll have a look at Fuzix. The Mailstations are cool, and cheap too.
link
david-given 1941 days ago
Sadly they're only available in the US, and it would triple the cost to get one sent to me in Switzerland! Fuzix would suffer from the same address space problem, however, but as there's no existing software for it it's less of an issue...
link
souprock 1942 days ago
TI calculators often have suitable hardware.

If you get a TI-84 Plus CE with older firmware (not locked down) you have a particularly good device. It has an EZ80 processor. You can put the EZ80 in a Z80-compatible mode. You could even pop in and out of that mode, letting you keep parts of CP/M outside of the Z80 address space. That would let you run larger Z80 programs. You get a 320x240 color display. There is a USB port that could be used to reach serial, floppies, printers, and keyboards.

link