The quoted message was sent to cbm-adm@nic.funet.fi mailing list. I just returned from Spain, and will answer the message now. A copy of it goes to the cbm-hackers mailing list, a list for 8-bit Commodore freaks. My answer is at the end of the message. On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Stephen Ames & Jennifer Lynne Wise, Jr. wrote: > Hello! > > Let me first praise you folks for the excellent job > that has been done maintaining the CP/M library at FUNET. > Now I'll introduce myself, my name is Stephen Wise and I'm > a Commodore 64 & 128 user. I also have several types of > IBM PCs and clones. Finally, and funny as this may sound, > I also use several Timex Sinclair 1000s. > > The following links may be of interest to you: > > Caldera's CP/M Archive - > http://www.caldera.com/products/drdos/cpm.html > > The Unofficial CP/M WEB SITE - > http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm/ > > > You may think that this project sounds like it is ab- > surd but it is one that I've taken on and I'm keeping my > fingers crossed that you will be able to assist me! > > Currently, I'm an active participant on Jack Raats' > ZX-81 List Server. As you probably know, this little > machine operates with a Z-80 CPU and has never had a disk > drive or any real operating system of its own. To commem- > orate its up coming 20th birthday, we have decided to adopt > Commodore's various 15xx series disk drives to it and give > it CP/M. It was decided in order to speed up development, > we would adapt certain things from Commodore's CP/M while > creating a CP/M 2.2 for the ZX-81/TS1000 because we are > using thier drives. > > At one time, Commodore released a version of CP/M for > the C64 and I need a copy of it so that we can study its use > and operation. For us to be able to use a 1541 disk drive > we must first load from tape a 1541 driver so that we can > access the 1541 through a parallel interface like those used > on IBM PCs and then load in CP/M from the drive just as it > is done with a C64. > > If you know somebody that has CP/M for the C64 and can > make a copy and send it to me it will be greatly appreciat- > ed. Likewise, any documentation and source code would also > be of help! I will pay costs! Even purchase a cartridge > and other materials. Any links or email addresses would be > of help too! > > Thanks for your time! > > Sincerely, > Steve Wise > Hello Steve, The C64 CP/M requires a special cartridge that has a Z80 processor. As far as I know, the cartridge was manufactured maybe from 1982 or 1983 to 1984 or 1985, and it is extremely rare. But it isn't that complicated, you could maybe build one yourself. I haven't seen the C64 CP/M in action, but I think it will be extremely slow. Although most of the CP/M functions were written in 6502 machine language to speed them up (that's what I've read; I haven't verified it from the C64 CP/M disk images available from http://www.funet.fi/pub/cbm/demodisks/), a Z80 running at 1 megahertz will be extremely slow. Most Z80 machines had at least 4 MHz clock speed, which gives about the same speed as a 6502 running at 1 MHz. Maybe it wouldn't be so difficult to modify a C64 emulator such as VICE to make it run the CP/M cartridge. There's some info about the CP/M cartridge in the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide, starting from page 368. These pages were removed from later prints, but they are present in the e-text copy you can find at http://www.funet.fi/pub/cbm/manuals/. Hmm, it seems that the e-text copy doesn't have all the info. I remember seeing a figure of the C64 CP/M disk layout (which is different from the C128 CP/M disk layout, because each track uses a constant number of sectors, thus wasting lots of disk space) somewhere. Maybe it was the C128 Programmer's Reference Guide then. Someone on the cbm-hackers list might sell his cartridge to you, but I recommend that you instead write a patch for an emulator so that it will run C64 CP/M. That would make the thing accessible for more users. For your project, the C128 CP/M seems more feasible. You can get even some source code to the C128 CP/M from /pub/cpm/sys/c128/system/. Marko - This message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list. To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe | mail cbm-hackers-request@dot.tcm.hut.fi.
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