3 ms·

I was wondering the same, but then I thought it would probably be easier to just translate the z80 CPM binaries to 6502... That should be relatively straightfor

• stormbrew 4y ago
  I dunno about cp/m binaries in particular, but static translation of machine code from that era can be really difficult because of mingled code and data, self modifying code, and unclear bounds on jump tables. So it might not be very easy at all, depending on how clever the people who wrote it were.
• simonblack 4y ago
  but then I thought it would probably be easier to just translate the z80 CPM binaries to 6502 All the CP/M binaries are for the 8080, not the Z80. The only place you might find Z80 code in a CP/M system is the machine-dependent I/O code in the CP/M BIOS. That will necessarily be different for any 6502-based computer hardware, and need to be rewritten, anyway. Or in the third-party apps. Though even there, most of the third-party companies restricted their software to using only 8080 code so their user-base was as large as possible. The important part of the CP/M architecture was the thousands of independent apps that used CP/M as their underlying OS. Very probably, the best 6502-based approach would be to keep all the CP/M system software and apps as 8080/Z80 code and use a 6502-based Z80 emulator. The BIOS itself could be replaced with native 6502 code as it uses a jump-table for the entry points.