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Probably --- CP/M is disturbingly flexible. Whether it'd be useful I don't know. Hardware-wise, you need 16kB or up RAM, preferably starting at 0x0000; a differ
by david-given 7y ago
Probably --- CP/M is disturbingly flexible. Whether it'd be useful I don't know. Hardware-wise, you need 16kB or up RAM, preferably starting at 0x0000; a different base address means you won't be able to run standard binaries (they need to be recompiled). But that's all you need. You don't even need interrupts.
The way you port it is to write a BIOS containing a few basic routines for console, printer and serial input and output and disk access, link it together with the kernel and the shell, and you're done. It's not a lot of code, particularly if you have simple hardware. You don't need a timer, interrupt based I/O, memory management, or anything like that. If you've got more hardware it's always useful. CP/M 3 had a sophisticated paging system which would let the bulk of CP/M itself be held in a different address space but it's pretty complex and I'm sticking with CP/M 2.2.
The biggest problem with a TI calculator is fitting enough text on. I know that recent calculators have bigger screens but my TI-85 has a 128x64 screen, with 21x8 characters with the default font. I don't believe Turbo Pascal will be very happy running with that although the documentation doesn't specify a minimum. My 1982 PX-8 laptop has an 80x8 screen, and that's cramped.