Short: Best Amiga CP/M 2.2 Emulator Author: "Bill Haygood " Uploader: "Jay S. Siegel" Type: misc/emu Replaces: misc/emu/AmigaZ80.lha Architecture: m68k-amigaos Distribution: Aminet 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. ;-)