5 ms·
how did the Z80 cards work interfacing with the Apple hardware? I presume CP/M software loaded onto the Z80 was accessing (what I will call) "S-100 memory and d
by fsckboy 3y ago
how did the Z80 cards work interfacing with the Apple hardware? I presume CP/M software loaded onto the Z80 was accessing (what I will call) "S-100 memory and displays"? Did you run a piece of software on the 6502 that translated/transported that virtual hardware state on the Z80 card to the real Apple hardware? Or did the Z80 card translate the available Apple hardware memory and display to be directly accessible to the Z80, and put the 6502 to sleep? The mind boggles. Hardware was much simpler back then, seems like anything could be possible, but memory was expensive so you wouldn't want to duplicate it or waste it.
I once heard from a reliable source that Paul Allen's Z80 card was Microsoft's big cash cow funding Microsoft's growth in between the BASIC era and the MS-DOS era, it was a really important product.
- bombcar 3y agohttps://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/2055/how-did-the-apple-ii-forward-binary-instructions-to-the-z80-software-card-with-c https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/2055/how-... has some background on it, and it was a huge success for Microsoft.
- js2 3y ago> Can you imagine in the 1990s plugging a Motorola 68020 card into a Intel 286 PC and running Mac programs? There was an Apple II peripheral card for the IBM PC: https://www.diskman.com/presents/trackstar/ https://www.diskman.com/presents/trackstar/ > (Or vice versa - plugging an Intel card into a Mac and running Windows programs on the hardware.) The PC Transporter was a peripheral card for the II GS. There was also an Apple IIe card for the Mac LC I think.