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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.

Still dreaming of a Otrona Attache portable CP/M computer, it's very handy (for 1982) and despite of this is still a full featured machine.
This picture shows another model with different floppy disk drives compared to the one I already have shown at http://www.z80.eu/otrona.html ...
I have seen a few in Ebay shops in the US, but they are really expensive (up to $ 400) and this is not what I looked for unfortunately.
But still, it's amazing to see such one and dream ...

It happens... I talked about it a few blog entries before already....

http://pag-per.servicam.com/migl/amstradpcw/

Miguel's Amstrad software and compiler pages seems to be lost (I mirrored his MESCC Small C variant now) ...

http://www.s100-manuals.com

Randy McLaughlin's S-100 Manuals Site is gone also

May be somebody mirrored Randy's pages already, but I didn't found any mirror yet.

Many of you already know that there is a gold mine for old (often scanned) documents at www.bitsavers.org , users and service manuals and other technical documents as well.
If not, try it (see reated link below), it's amazing what can be found there !!!

I was really happy getting back from holidays and finding a big package in my house corridor - a Philips P2012 equipped with a CoPower 8088 card, which make it possible to run not only Z80 based CP/M 2.2 but also MS-DOS 2.11 on the coprocessor card (THANKS TO
TON SCHLUTER HERE AGAIN !).
Initial problems with non booting "boot diskettes" slowed my enthusiasm a bit down, but a bit later I was able to boot with the 508KB RAMDisk (for CP/M 2.2!) and also with MS-DOS 2.11, see my new pictures at the Philips P2000 pages also. I am still curious if a newer version of MS-DOS exists for the Philips P20xx series ... still searching for it. Any hints welcome ;-)

Below a picture of the "booted" MS-DOS on a Philips P2012:


The CoPower Card:

Following the discussions about a possible implementation in comp.os.cpm, I asked myself for what reason would this a goal ?

On http://www.cpm.z80.de/randyfiles/DRI/cpm-tcp.zip an early try is ready for download, but it's made for a Xerox 820, nowadays a real rare computer.

If you "google" for a while, you find additional tries at ftp://ftp.ucsd.edu/hamradio/packet/tcpip/ . A new project covering similar ideas can be found at http://www.kc85.susowa.homeftp.net/ named "KCNET", adapted for a KC85 and additional interface hardware.



Corrected after a discussion in comp.os.cpm:

Assuming that you also need applications for the network stack, these tries will consume a lot of memory from the TPA of CP/M, and the execution speed of all things together (not only the interface program) is awful (guess why...). I am not convinced this make any sense, because a rich connectivity can be implemented also via serial port and KERMIT (see also my page how to build an adapted kermit version) or an external box which translates KERMIT commands to FTP.

Also, an other approach can be much easier... just implement a smart interface card with an ATMEL microprocessor and an Ethernet interface would be gorgeous, the ATMEL could simulate KERMIT or an other known communication protocol or even a kind of CP/Net - but not just a TCP/IP stack without any application.



I've found the hardware module which is used for that stuff at http://www.ewiznet.com/goods_detail.php?goodsIdx=94 , it's very interesting, but as I already wrote, without an application like FTP on the Z80 side it will be almost useless.