3 ms·

I'm currently running CP/M, on a Z80 single-board computer with 64k RAM. Compiling a simple snake, or tetris game, takes about two seconds. CP/M with turbo p

I'm currently running CP/M, on a Z80 single-board computer with 64k RAM. Compiling a simple snake, or tetris game, takes about two seconds. CP/M with turbo pascal is pretty fast. I started my journey with ZX Spectrum BASIC, then z80 assembly, before jumping to MS-DOS and x86 assembly. Learning C, and other languages, didn't start until my 16-bit days. (Though I have a memory of receiving a FORTH system for the ZX Spectrum I don't think I did anything useful with it, or fully understood it given that I was about 15 at the time.)

jacquesm 3y ago
Very nice, what are you running, one of Ciarcia's boards or something else entirely? And what do you use for mass storage? When I was in 8 bit territory the best I could get was 360K floppies and running any kind of serious compiler required multiple floppy swaps to get the passes in. 6809 with 64K RAM was the best 8 bit system that I had, the next best was a BBC Model B with a very much maxed out Solidisk (more than maxed out, we ran more banks than were officially supported).
- stevekemp 3y ago
  A random board I came across by accident - low production run, but decent despite that. The board uses an USB-stick for storage, formatted as a FAT filesystem which makes exchanging files between this and another system easy - though of course you can transfer files over the serial port. The biggest issue is that the board has only 62k of RAM so I'm stuck with CP/M 2.2, rather than 3.0 which requires paging-support. Still I can run infocom games, BASIC, Turbo Pascal, and other retro things.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'd love to know more about your board, it sounds like a very interesting one. Is it in S100 bus format or something bespoke?
    - stevekemp 3y ago
      Something bespoke. My code repository contains a link to a youtube channel where the board was discussed, and where I found it randomly. But sadly the upstream site of the provider and the (useful) forums it hosted are gone unless you use the wayback machine: https://github.com/skx/z80-playground-cpm-fat https://github.com/skx/z80-playground-cpm-fat
    - AlexeyBrin 3y ago
      As an alternative - Agon Light 2 (eZ80 CPU). By default it comes with BBC BASIC modified to take advantage of 24 bits addressing, but it can run CP/M if you want. The nice thing about Agon is that it can run standalone if you add to it a keyboard and a VGA display.

jacquesm 3y ago

Very nice, what are you running, one of Ciarcia's boards or something else entirely? And what do you use for mass storage? When I was in 8 bit territory the best I could get was 360K floppies and running any kind of serious compiler required multiple floppy swaps to get the passes in. 6809 with 64K RAM was the best 8 bit system that I had, the next best was a BBC Model B with a very much maxed out Solidisk (more than maxed out, we ran more banks than were officially supported).

stevekemp 3y ago
A random board I came across by accident - low production run, but decent despite that. The board uses an USB-stick for storage, formatted as a FAT filesystem which makes exchanging files between this and another system easy - though of course you can transfer files over the serial port. The biggest issue is that the board has only 62k of RAM so I'm stuck with CP/M 2.2, rather than 3.0 which requires paging-support. Still I can run infocom games, BASIC, Turbo Pascal, and other retro things.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I'd love to know more about your board, it sounds like a very interesting one. Is it in S100 bus format or something bespoke?
  - stevekemp 3y ago
    Something bespoke. My code repository contains a link to a youtube channel where the board was discussed, and where I found it randomly. But sadly the upstream site of the provider and the (useful) forums it hosted are gone unless you use the wayback machine: https://github.com/skx/z80-playground-cpm-fat https://github.com/skx/z80-playground-cpm-fat
  - AlexeyBrin 3y ago
    As an alternative - Agon Light 2 (eZ80 CPU). By default it comes with BBC BASIC modified to take advantage of 24 bits addressing, but it can run CP/M if you want. The nice thing about Agon is that it can run standalone if you add to it a keyboard and a VGA display.