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Please note also - THIS BLOG ENDS HERE WITH THE LAST ENTRY FROM NOVEMBER 9th 2021.

I have prepared a new blog with wordpress at https://vintagecomputing.info !!!

Thank you.

Yes, good things can take time.
But now, there is some hope... I was waiting for a 64bit version of Delphi for years.
Now there is one:

You can view a sneak preview movie about it at embarcadero.com:
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/64-bit

Hopefully this 64bit version of Delphi will be available within the next months.
And I still have hope, it will be only an update for current customers of Delphi XE.

Amazing what some had already developed... it's a silicon floppy which can emulate even disk drives for an Apple II, but also for unusual disk formats like the TRS-80 SD/DD mixed ones.

Just take a look at
http://www.thesvd.com/svd/index.php

It doesn't look very expressive, but it is !

Inside, a PIC 16C74 processor will do the job.
It will be connected with the help of a RS232 interface.
Windows and Linux is supported from PC side.
And it can be build by yourself as a "kit".

Updated years later: Website is gone :-( Have changed the link to the archive.org-Version.

Interesting idea: Take a device which can do conversion between TCP/IP and a Serial Port ...

http://www.toniwestbrook.com/archives/148

This is not very cheap, but seems to be an easy way to get files through an Ethernet network or even via WiFi connection from and to a CP/M computer.
Also, a modem can be emulated (think about using RBBS hosted on an old CP/M computer).
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean you have something like a drive extension (getting files from and to a PC), and so you're still limited to communication programs at the CP/M side.

May be Kermit can be used (at PC side, PC-Kermit 95 through network, at CP/M side, the old Kermit 4.11). I don't know. Have to ask Toni (I will update this entry if I get an answer).

Clive Sinclair's last computer creation was manufactured by his own company Cambridge Computer. It's a Z80 (3.2768 MHz) based very slim and handy laptop, has a LCD display with 6 rows and 80 columns (native resolution is 640x64 pixels), and at least 32KB RAM.
You can use additional cards to extend your storage up to 1 MByte RAM / ROM.
BBC Basic was integrated as a programming language.
Unfortunately this beautiful beast not really had a commercial success, one reason was the proprietary card format, also almost no other vendor developed software for it.

It's still a hot collector item:

For more information, take a look at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/z88forever/ .
You will see, there are not too much sites / pages about the Z88.
At sourceforge, a development environment and a virtual machine can be found.
http://www.algonet.se/~dennisgr/z88.htm has a development kit named Z88DK, which is usable not only to create Z88 programs.
Rakewell still produces innovative hardware expansions.You can even buy a Z88 still there !

Not very spectacular, but that's still a good news for me.
A very smart alternative for the build in BASIC 2.0, that's COMAL80.

It's working without any special procedure... just insert cartridge and start the C64:

It's an almost dead programming language, but if you have only the choice between BASIC, COMAL and Assembler, it's worth a try. COMAL80 was a mixture between BASIC and PASCAL, but feels a bit more like BASIC than PASCAL.

For the C64, there is another comparison to BASIC 2.0 here: LINK

If you're curious about COMAL, try the related link below ;-)