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From: =?UTF-8?Q?Josef_M=C3=B6llers?= <josef@invalid.invalid>
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Subject: Re: Just wondering...
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2025 11:33:48 +0200
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On 04.06.25 06:37, pH wrote:
> On 2025-06-03, Josef Möllers <josef@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 02.06.25 17:55, pH wrote:
>>> On 2025-06-02, Josef Möllers <josef@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On 02.06.25 15:31, John wrote:
>>>>> If people have migrated to another site...
>>>>> ... or maybe have (gulp) died off...
>>>>
>>>> I, for one, am still lurking.
>>>> But I find little time to tinker with my SB180FX.
>>>>
>>>> Josef
>>>
>>> Oh! Is that the Board from Steve Ciarcia of Byte Magazine?
>>
>> Yes. I did have a GT180 as well, but that didn't survive a faulty power
>> connection (as did the SB180FX, but I managed to get replacements for
>> all the chips on that board).
>>
>>>   Was it a Hitachi
>>> chip?
> 
> I seem to recall it was....6MHz?

That was the SB180. The SB180FX has the faster CPU and runs with the 
blazing speed of 9MHz.
I also have the full 512KB of memory installed.

>> Yes, an HD64180.
>>
>>>   I don't recall....and was it CP/M 3?
>>
>> It was a CP/M clone called Zsystem.
> 
> Is that the same as ZCPR?  I remember reading about it.

Not quite. ZCPR is the "Zsystem Command Processor Replacement". The OS 
is called ZRDOS. Together they are the "ZSystem".

>> At the time I worked for a computer manufacturer who occasionally sold
>> surplus stuff to employees, so I had quickly added a 10MB (in words: TEN
>> MEGABYTES ... ALL FOR ME!!!!) hard disk through an Adaptec host adapter,
>> later a Quantum 40MB SCSI disk, but now it has a solid state SCSI flash
>> disk. Also, as I feared that the floppies wouldn't last longer, I
>> replaced the FDDs with a USB-Floppy-Adapter, allowing me to have almost
>> all floppies online.
>>
> That is cool you have all that stuff.  I thought that CP/M 3 /ZCPR could
> bank-switch 64 banks of 64K for a grand total of 8MB of memory (or so I
> thought...) I thought that would be good for all eternity.

Not quite sure about the bank switching of the OS proper, but the CPU 
does has a MMU which is geared towards supporting CP/M (and thus ZRDOS) 
in that it could (can, im my case ;-) ) map three sections of the 
virtual address space: 0..100H, 100H..<start of the OS>, <start of the 
OS>..0FFFFH.

I bought it with a Modula-2 compiler which should have been able to use 
that to do some parallel processing, but I never got that to work, so I 
got the original compiler suite from Micromint.

I still like Modula-2!

> Turns out I have no clue on how things really work hardware wise and CP/M 3
> still had a 64K or less TPA and other banks used for buffers, i/O and
> whatnot I guess.  Still, that would have been a speedup and who knows what
> would have been cobbled together over the next couple years had King Kong
> not arrived w/ the 8088 et. al.

A couple of years ago, I got the box with the stuff out and decided it 
would be fun to tinker with it. Unfortunately I had a power connector 
that you could plug in either way, so one day I put 12V on the 5V line 
and vice versa. Don't ask, if you don't want to see a grown man cry.
However, luckily, I was able to source most of the hardware from "the 
Turkish shop in China" and from a (then) former colleague, so at least 
the main board is back into working condition. And since I have replaced 
all the parts that use the 12V (mainly the RS232 drivers) with something 
else, eg the SB180FX has now an XPORT ethernet-to-serial interface, so I 
can access it from every computer in my household.
> 
> I reemember that Philippe Kahn released Turbo Modula-2 for that machine.
> 
> What other software do you have for it? WordStar, Supercalc, CBASIC is about
> all I can think of.  I had Mix C for my old Apple ][+ w/ cp/m card.

I did get a CP/M PD and ShareWare CD from Walnut Creek but also got some 
stuff from some archive(s).

I just tried to boot the SB180FX, but I recall that I had completely 
disconnected the board and when I re-connected it wires from the RS232 
driver/receiver socket the the XPORT broke. I shall have to warm up my 
soldering iron.

I just love to program on teh SB180FX ... on the bare metal ... in 
direct contact with the hardware ... assembler ... fun!

Josef