From: Jay S. Siegel
PO BOX 401
HINES IL 60141-0401
USA
Date: Monday, February 2, 2009
What this is:
-------------
This is the best CP/M ver. 2.2 emulator for Amiga computers. It is run from the CLI (Command Line Interface) shell.
There are CPU-specific versions of the program for the 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, 68040 CPUs, & a generic version (AMIGAZ80.ALL). If you have a 68060 accelerator, use the 68040-specific CPU version.
The program is written in C, so don't expect assembler execution speeds.
I believe that the author, Bill Haygood told me that the screen format this CP/M emulator uses is an ADM3 (?) or something like that. It's definitely not using Osborne screen control characters. I asked him about that. Just something to keep in mind when installing WordStar 4.0 or dBase 2.43*, both of which I legally own, under this emulator.
A Little History Lesson:
------------------------
This is not the latest version of AmigaZ80. I believe Bill Haygood told me that he had eventually stopped @ a version that ran CP/M 3.0 (aka: CP/M Plus), but had lost all sources. This is the version I got from David A. J. McGlone of Lambda Software. David used to publish "The Z-Letter", a CP/M newsletter. David was selling this AmigaZ80 emulator at the time. I believe that AmigaZ80 was reviewed in issue #36 of David's Z-Letter. That's one of the few issues of the Z-Letter that I don't have. This is my own personal version I received at the time in exchange for sending him the MS-DOS version of SpellBinder in a swap, which was sometime in the late 1990s.
I had received verbal approval to upload this to the public domain during my conversation with the author, Bill Haygood, 2 to 3 years ago from today since he no longer:
1) sells it
2) supports it
3) can find any of its source code, sadly.
Bill originally had the Haygood.com domain & gave it up to someone else not related to him at all & moved his domain to Haygood.net for those of you who might be interested in researching it on www.archive.org. It appears that shortly after I contacted him, he no longer updates his site, nor returns e-mails. I don't know if he's even alive at this point.
The reasons it took me so long to finally upload this to AmiNet were that I had so little time & had so very much on my plate, plus, I had forgotten to get around to it. Sorry. Better late than never!
Intallation:
------------
It's really quite simple.
1) Just make a directory, such as Work:Emulators/CPM2.2
2) COPY the appropriate CPU version into that newly created directory AS: Z80
3) copy the rest of the non-CPU files as is over to that newly created directory
Voila! You're done with the installation!
Executing the Program:
----------------------
Firstly, read the Authors_READ.ME file.
I cheated a bit. I created an icon for the Z80 program itself that starts from the Shell. I entered the following parameters on after the program's name to look something like this:
Z80 -disk a disk.cpm -boot -banks 16 -lpt prt: -clock -tz +6
Parameters translated:
1) -disk a disk.cpm = Make the A: drive the disk.cpm file
2) -boot = Boot from the first bootable drive
3) -banks 16 = The maximum amount of memory that CP/M 2.2 can handle - i.e. 16 banks of 64K
4) -lpt prt: = Assign the Amiga's (line) printer.device to CP/M 2.2's prt: (printer) device. This will also work with the CTL-P toggle
5) -clock = Install the software real time clock
6) -tz +6 = Time Zone (from Greenwich?). In my case USA Central Standard Time (CST) would be -6. I don't know why in the Authors_READ.ME file Bill's got +8 for PST (Pacific Standard Time). I thought it should be -8 instead, no?
To terminate the program, enter HALT at the A> prompt -OR- press the F10 function key.
Bugs noted:
-----------
1) The -tz option cannot be followed with a negative number, even though the Authors_READ.ME shows that it clearly can. What was Bill thinking here?
2) N.B.: This program is *NOT* asynchronous task-friendly, unfortunately. It's single-tasking, just like CP/M is. Do not attempt to multitask with this program running. I warned you!
3) I'm sure there are more, just haven't found them yet. ;-)
|
aminet net>