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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.

After I got some CP/M machines last year, I had no time to check and test them.
I swapped the Portable CP/M machine already against 2 Microprofessor MPF-1, and the TCS Genie IIIS didn't work (a bit oxidized socketed ICs on the mainboard could be the reason).
But I had luck, my fastest CP/M machine ever worked !!!
First, I checked the power suppy, but I didn't found anything unusual or defect.
Then I checked my WYSE WY-60 terminal, because the Micromint does not have a build-in video interface (except the GT180 card, but which is not used for operating system command in- and output). After I rediscovered how to get into the SETUP of the terminal (Shift-Select did it!), I got it tested with a loopback connector (pin 2-3 4-5 and 6-20 connected), and it worked.
Now I plugged the power cable and also the RS232 cable for the terminal connection, and voilà, it runs (exception: BDOS-Error on Drive B ... not sure about it yet):


P.S.: It's really fast, but I expected this already from a 9.2MHz Z80-compatible system.
It has 2304KB RAM in total, and can make use of all RAM. Also, there is a build-in SCSI controller (NCR-chip), and I have also a XEROX SCSI HDD for it, but not yet tested.

Later added: Drive B: is working, but has a different format, because it's an 80 track drive.

The 'related link' points to an overview of all available software disks.

I finished "Peter's Adventure" ... it's V1.0 (there is still much room for improvements, but it runs fine). I tested it with BASICA, GWBASIC and QBASIC, and also with CP/M 2.2 and MBASIC 5.29 and I compiled it with BASCOM.

This is how it looks with MyZ80 and MBASIC now:


You can download the full source code of Version 1.02 >HERE<.

You can compile the source code with the following two commands using BASCOM running with CP/M:
B> BASCOM =PADVENT/X/O
B> L80 PADVENT,PADVENT/N/E

The compiled CP/M executable can be download at "related link" below.

ADDED LATER: I've corrected several minor errors and added a text file as a "README".
The Version 1.02 can be downloaded above now (instead of v1.00 and 1.01).

I finished an almost playable version of my almost pure data driven Text Adventure Game, which is written in BASICA (GWBASIC). It was done just for fun, to show that modular programming is also possible with an old programming language.
It is *very easy* be modified to have a totally different story line, because most of the game flow is stored in DATA lines.

These DATA lines look like this (excerpt):

4110 DATA "Grass,1,the border,0"
4120 DATA "Grass,1,grassland,0"
4130 DATA "Grass,1,Stones,2,Plants,1,stony ground,0"
4140 DATA "Grass,1,Stones,2,grassland with stones,0"
4150 DATA "Grass,1,Insects,1"
4160 DATA "Grass,1,Trees,1,Nuts,4,a forest,0"
4170 DATA "Grass,1,Trees,1,Nuts,4,a forest,0"
4180 DATA "Grass,1,Trees,1,Nuts,4,a forest,0"
4190 DATA "Grass,1,Trees,1,Nuts,4,Stones,2,a forest and stones,0"

Each object has it's "object" or "item" type in a following number.
There is a type 0 for a description (only), and another type 9 for special descriptions.
The rest of the types are consumable, can be used as a weapon or can be killed ;-)

The map is a rectangle with 11 fields (height and width), but this can be easily changed, too. Also, the descriptions which are shown for each item type can be changed easily.
Just take a look into the source code (at the end all data is listed).

This is still Version 0.90 and contains an extra bug (for testing, line 4060), and has a command not ready implemented, "DRINK" (but the rest is working fine).

Take a look at the running program, I made a video and uploaded it on youtube (see "related link").

The source code of version 0.90 can be downloaded >here<.

Added later: Meanwhile I finished the program to be fully functional, see >here<.

Not well known in Europe, but in Japan: The fastest 8086 PC ever is a NEC PC-98DO+ (one of the later models of the PC-9801 series), build around 1990.
The PC has a NEC V33A CPU running at 16 MHz, which is something between a 8086 and a 80186, but not an AT compatible (or higher). It has an EGA graphics card, a YM2608 (OPNA) sound chip/card, and of course already using a HDD, too.

The design looks like the later EPSON PC clone design, but we know, NEC build their PCs a bit before EPSON did it, too.
Unfortunately the V33A CPU is *not* pin compatible with the standard 8086, instead, it has a separate address and data bus, but has the same instruction set as the NEC V30 (which is pin compatible with the 8086). May be it is possible to build a CPU adapter for it, but it's far too late to have still a high demand for this ;-)

Still have no time to finish my modular text adventure game in plain GWBASIC. I am still struggeling with the complexity to have something like a evaluable map with items, story elements and terrain details. At the moment, only the command interpreter is finished, and a basic mechanism for going around and looking the items you can see or get, beside some debugging infos.


But while surfing through the world wide web, I found a really nice archive of vintage computer advertisments mainly from the late seventies/early eighties.
E.g. Cromenco's Z-2 system, which is a really nice S-100 bus computer, but meanwhile hard to find. It's named as "Low cost harddisk system", which may sound unbelievable, also because this system wasn't cheap at all (below $10000 ... wow isn't it worth the price :facepalm:).
It's running CDOS 2.x (Cromenco Disk Operating System, which can run CP/M programs, too) or Cromix. The Z-2H was the hard disk version, the Z-2D the diskette version.
Further infos can be found at >http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/crom/index.htm<

For the URL of the advertisment site, see "related link" below.