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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.

I have added a page about a very useful CP/M shell, which can be seen as a CCP replacement, too. It was a very expensive ($150) utility, so this could be one reason why it was not wide spreaded nor "popular". But New Generation Systems microshell (version 2.0) was very handy, it was easily possible to create mighty shell scripts, as usual with UNIX (but not with CP/M).

See for more info my new page at http://www.z80.eu/microshell.html


Also, during my investigations about the above mentioned microshell, I found a Norton Commander alike program on a czech web page, called NIPSOFT Commander.
Seems to be very sophisticated, unfortunately I am not able to translate czech language into english.
It was created for the MZ-800 CP/M 2.2 clone, but I guess it will run on any CP/M 2.2, may be somebody have to modify the screen control commands - sources included !

See for more info at http://www.scav.ic.cz/download/MZ-800/M ... /PROGS/NC/


P.S.: If somebody is able to translate the man page, plz give me an info.

Addendum (14-July): It will definitely not run on a plain vanilla CP/M 2.2, because the MZ-800 had an specially adapted and in parts completely rewritten CP/M 2.2 clone.
Also, there is no source code available, that makes this harder ;-(

There is a really refreshing article about the S100 bus, the history around, nice pictures of a S100 bus system and cards at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/01/s100/

Don't miss that article, regardless of the fact that it's nothing really new told, but I am convinced that it make appetite to get your own S100 bus soon ;-)

Yes, I didn't recognize it. But there were not many 'Zorba' produced 'til 1984.
And as far as I can found any kind of info, this computer wasn't selled in europe.
It looks similar to a Kaypro or a Philips P2000 (not the colors, but the concept), and it has also a 4 MHz Z80A inside. Also, the disk capacity was similar to the Kaypro 4 ... 380KB per drive. Like the Philips P2000, there was also a 8088 coprocessor card available.

For more information, just visit this very informative pages, which were hosted from Gaby Chaudry also:

http://www.zorba.z80.de/

I was looking for a german article about TCP/IP for CP/M and the progress this project made, and I saw there are some utilities like tftp and ping now available (still looking for a real FTP.COM...).
Then I was looking what the site offers also.
And I was surprised that somebody implemented already a two pane file copier/renamer/deleter/executer (= like the Norton Commander for DOS/Windows or later the Midnight Commander for Linux represents).
See http://susowa.homeftp.net
For download of the binary and source visit the download detail page.
It's implemented with the help of submit (it does not do everything by calling CP/M APIs, but it looks still awesome, also because of using colors for different info windows of course.
So shame on me that I didn't finish my own project :-(

But I will do it this year, with the help of longer holidays for sure.

For many of us, they are not known or at least forgotten.... but 3 years before the Altair 8800, in January 1973, there was already a hardware available for computer enthusiasts:

The R2E Micral was one of the first, may be the first computer which can be called "Microcomputer", because it wasn't a cabinet sized hardware, it was in a similar size like an Altair, or even the first IBM PC.
Although it was based on an Intel 8008 Chip (running at a 500 Khz frequency), it provides additional instructions for interrupt handling and data manipulation. It was created from the "French National Institute for Agronomic Research" (I.N.R.A.) because of the lack of money for PDP-8 hardware.
It has a bus system similar to the S100 bus, called 'Pluribus', several I/O and memory cards were build. At least, 2KByte RAM was the standard design, but 16KByte could be used (14 bit address bus, 8 bit data bus) in total.
One year later a Two-Pass-Assembler was available, and also a high level control language.

For more information, please look at the following URLs:

http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=352
http://www.feb-patrimoine.com/projet/micral/micral.htm
http://febcm.club.fr/systemes_ord/Micral_n.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Micral
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Vor-30-J ... dung/33686
http://www.avandor.net/micral.htm

A very interesting interview with the creator of that piece of computer history can be found at Wired.com: http://www.wired.com/science/discoverie ... 97/09/6850

To get an impression how it looked:

Also interesting... some Infos about a self-made (no kit, just plans and pcbs) computer in mid of 1973 - the Mark 8, also based on the 8008:
http://web.archive.org/web/200402160215 ... ark8b.html
http://www.bytecollector.com/mark_8.htm