tomicdesu
Active member
Thanks to the wonderful culture of folks' here I was able to put together a fully functional standalone CP/M-80 version 2.2 machine using Teensy 4.1. None of the host teensy code is visible, it boots Z80/8080 code like a 1978 machine, with all of the BIOS, boot, ROM monitor, written in Digital Research's MAC and ASM. Utilities (FORMAT, SYSGEN, ROM and keyboard map uploaders, etc) were written in BDC C 1.6, on the machine. It has a nice workflow as a CP/M machine.
I'd done CP/M installs professionally in the 70's and 80's, and I wanted a machine as good or better than anything then. Intentional anachronisms: SD cards as removable media; a modern USB keyboard; USB-C power. The rest is pure Z80/8080, there's no way to tell it's NOT a Z80. With the Teensy 4.1 running at stock 600 MHz I crudely estimate CPU speed as about 60 MHz; fast enough to be a real improvement but not silly-fast. So far I've gathered only a small amount of CP/M abandonware, while developing the project, and customized two text editors for the machine ("H19 terminal"); WordStar rel 4, and PMate 3.21. WordStar fetches screen resolution from the VGA device at runtime. Should run anything you can download.
Provided utilities move files between CP/M and the SD card's FAT filesystem.
Full description of the project is here: https://www.bleeve.me/eZ80/index.html The web page is a work in progress.
I only wanted one (or two) for myself, but I may make in quantity if there's interest. I made 5 prototypes, those boards are about to go to friends for getting hours on them and chase down bugs. The code is on the website above, imperfectly, this is going on now, if something's wrong/missing I'll fix ASAP.
Thanks to everyone who answered my annoying questions in various threads this past 6 months, and to wwatson for VGA_4bit.
I'd done CP/M installs professionally in the 70's and 80's, and I wanted a machine as good or better than anything then. Intentional anachronisms: SD cards as removable media; a modern USB keyboard; USB-C power. The rest is pure Z80/8080, there's no way to tell it's NOT a Z80. With the Teensy 4.1 running at stock 600 MHz I crudely estimate CPU speed as about 60 MHz; fast enough to be a real improvement but not silly-fast. So far I've gathered only a small amount of CP/M abandonware, while developing the project, and customized two text editors for the machine ("H19 terminal"); WordStar rel 4, and PMate 3.21. WordStar fetches screen resolution from the VGA device at runtime. Should run anything you can download.
Provided utilities move files between CP/M and the SD card's FAT filesystem.
Full description of the project is here: https://www.bleeve.me/eZ80/index.html The web page is a work in progress.
I only wanted one (or two) for myself, but I may make in quantity if there's interest. I made 5 prototypes, those boards are about to go to friends for getting hours on them and chase down bugs. The code is on the website above, imperfectly, this is going on now, if something's wrong/missing I'll fix ASAP.
Thanks to everyone who answered my annoying questions in various threads this past 6 months, and to wwatson for VGA_4bit.