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CP/M Emulator on a 8088 class machine

C

curtis

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 30, 2003
Messages
1,176
Location
Amarillo, TX
I am tinkering with running CP/M on a 8088 machine. Why you ask? Why not!

I think it would be interesting to have CP/M running on a handheld like the HP 100, or any of the Poqet palmtops, or heck, even the Atari Portfolio!

Anybody have any experience here?

I'm currently running 22nice and it seems pretty good. Was trying MyZ80, but it needs a '286 or better.

BTW, I contacted Sydex about 22nice and registering it and they'd still be willing to sell me a license for 22nice and 22Disk for $100. Of course, there is NO support for 22nice.

Curtis
 
Re: CP/M Emulator on a 8088 class machine

curtis said:
BTW, I contacted Sydex about 22nice and registering it and they'd still be willing to sell me a license for 22nice and 22Disk for $100. Of course, there is NO support for 22nice.

Curtis
Click to expand...

I have a few of their products, some of which are no longer available, others are equally high-priced. I'm sure they'd like a bunch of my money but I'd rather not use their products.
 
Yeah, $100 seemed quite steep to me.

Their reasoning was that since 22disk costs corporate customers $150, they would "cut me a deal" of $100 seeing I'm just a hobbiest and toss in 22nice for nothing.

What would I get for my $100? Licenses for 2 pieces of software that work just fine without the license. Hmmm.

Is there anything that even remotely hints at I just fell off a turnip truck?

curtis
 
Re: CP/M Emulator on a 8088 class machine

curtis said:
I am tinkering with running CP/M on a 8088 machine.
Click to expand...

I always thought one of the "points" of the 8086/8088 was that it was going to be trivial to get 8080/8085 programs running. Noone did this for CP/M?
 
Re: CP/M Emulator on a 8088 class machine

kjs3 said:
curtis said:
I am tinkering with running CP/M on a 8088 machine.
Click to expand...

I always thought one of the "points" of the 8086/8088 was that it was going to be trivial to get 8080/8085 programs running. Noone did this for CP/M?
Click to expand...

I've heard of emulators that run on the NEC V-20, but I've never seen one in captivity.

The thing I don't understand is why nobody ever ported CP/M to the TRS-80 Model 100, (I8085) as popular as those systems were.

--T
 
Re: CP/M Emulator on a 8088 class machine

"Terry Yager" wrote:

>> I am tinkering with running CP/M on a 8088 machine.

>> I always thought one of the "points" of the 8086/8088
>> was that it was going to be trivial to get 8080/8085
>> programs running. Noone did this for CP/M?

> I've heard of emulators that run on the NEC V-20, but
> I've never seen one in captivity.

Then you've never been to the CP/M-86 Software
Repository: http://www.seanet.com/~klaw/ there's a
program there which uses this NEC V20 chip. The
emulator is better than any ordinary emulator, because
of the access it has to this chip!

Cheers,
CP/M User.
 
"Terry Yager" wrote:

> I guess I haven't seen it because I
> haven't looked real hard. I don't
> have a V-20 to run it on anyways,
> but I'd like to try it out someday.

I was under the impression that
somebody else wanted the 8080
support on their IBM. Course you'd
need the V-20 processor, how does
that work, does it fit onto the
Motherboard, or is it a card in itself?

I've seen other expansion cards
which offered Z80/8080 support,
but to track one down would be
hard. These are the ones which
were build when the IBM lacked
software & so they went to a
popular processor which had
support for lots of software. Z80
was one, since it supports 8080
in itself.

The emulator which uses the V20
processor at the CP/M-86
software repository is also on a
number of other websites as well
(IIRC). I'm not sure if it's
PC-BLUE, SIG/M or COMUG which
has it, or if it's on a FTP site which
has CP/M stuff on.

Cheers,
CP/M User.
 
CP/M User said:
I was under the impression that
somebody else wanted the 8080
support on their IBM. Course you'd
need the V-20 processor, how does
that work, does it fit onto the
Motherboard, or is it a card in itself?
Click to expand...
The V-20 is a pin-for-pin compatable drop-in replacement for the 8088. The chip is faster than the 8088,(at the same clock speed) as well as being backward-compatable with the 8080. (It supports the full 8080 instruction set natively, rather than translating the instructions on-the-fly like the 8088 has to do).
I've seen other expansion cards
which offered Z80/8080 support,
but to track one down would be
hard. These are the ones which
were build when the IBM lacked
software & so they went to a
popular processor which had
support for lots of software. Z80
was one, since it supports 8080
in itself.
Click to expand...
There are several different varieties of Z-80 boards for the IBM-PC, but they all work pretty much the same way. They are actually miniture Z-80 computers on a board. They have, besides the Z-80, thier own memory space and I/O, but use the IBM I/O channel to access peripherals. The one I used to have was the Blue Thunder, a 64Kb version. Another popular one at the time was the Baby Blue card. These are generally faster than a pure software emulation because, again, no translation of the opcodes is necessary, they run natively on the Z-80.
The emulator which uses the V20
processor at the CP/M-86
software repository is also on a
number of other websites as well
(IIRC). I'm not sure if it's
PC-BLUE, SIG/M or COMUG which
has it, or if it's on a FTP site which
has CP/M stuff on.

Cheers,
CP/M User.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's probably a copy of it on the CP/M CD too, but I'll have to check on that one.

--T
 
"Terry Yager" wrote:

> Yeah, there's probably a copy of it on the CP/M CD
> too, but I'll have to check on that one.

Yeah, there probably is on that the CD. Half the fun
would be trying to find the darn thing, or just do a
google advanced search on Genes website (which
has the CD) with the approrate keyword! :)

Cheers,
CP/M User.
 
Re: CP/M Emulator on a 8088 class machine

curtis said:
I am tinkering with running CP/M on a 8088 machine. Why you ask? Why not!

I think it would be interesting to have CP/M running on a handheld like the HP 100, or any of the Poqet palmtops, or heck, even the Atari Portfolio!

Anybody have any experience here?

I'm currently running 22nice and it seems pretty good. Was trying MyZ80, but it needs a '286 or better.

Curtis
Click to expand...

Nothing like reviving an ol' dead thread...

I was looking for another old post last night and came across this one instead. I thought HHMMMMNN...why not? So, I loaded 22NICE onto my Poqet PC, and thought I'd comment on it. The emulator itself seems to run admirably well, but other programs may be a little iffy. So far, I have only tried it with two programs, WordStar 3.3 & MBASIC. The programs under MBASIC seem to run out just fine. As far as I can remember running them on an actual floppy-based CP/M machine, program execution speed is about normal. WordStar, OTOH, is running so s-l-o-w as to be completely un-usable. It takes over 30 seconds to paint a single line of text on the screen. It did seem to work as normal, except for the speed. All the commands I gave it were executed (eventually) as usual.
I guess I'll experiment around some more with it tonight, and see what other software I can find that works. If anyone has any specific suggestions you'd like me to try out, I'll give it a go.
BTW, I was unable to run the emulator from my SRAM card because it was too small to hold the emulator and the WS files at the same time. My SRAM is only 512Kb. Luckily, I do have the external floppy drive, and all programs will fit on those 1.44Mb floppies, so it worked out just fine. (I'm in the market for a couple of <CHEAP> Type I PCMCIA SRAM cards in the 2-4Mb range, if anyone has any). The Poqet PC has not satisfied my desire for a truly portable CP/M machine, but it's better than nothing. (BTW, curtis, I'm still loving my PX-8, but lack of sufficient mass-storage is still a problem). Mebbe the Poqet will work out better after I find some larger-capacity memory cards for it.

--T

wordstar.jpg
 
"Terry Yager" Wrote:

> UUUmmm...I think it's sum'n like 700 x 4-sum'n.
> What kinda computer are ya viewing it on?

Pentium I class computer! Usually anything bigger than
640x480 starts to run into performance problems.

Cheers,
CP/M User.
 
OK, I re-sized it a little. Now it's at 640 x 427. Lemme know if it's still a problem. (I'd like to make sure my vintage computer pics are viewable on vintage computers).

--T
 
"Terry Yager" wrote:

> OK, I re-sized it a little. Now it's at 640 x 427. Lemme
> know if it's still a problem. (I'd like to make sure my
> vintage computer pics are viewable on vintage computers).

Na, that's heaps better. The image fully displays itself
imediately.

Cheers,
CP/M User.
 
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