Trump Card Z8000 PC Coprocessor card Part 2, 1980s Vintage, Lost software has been found!

Подписаться 12 тыс.

Просмотров 1,7 тыс.

50% 1

About 6 months ago, I bought a used "Trump Card" off of eBay. This card is a Zilog Z8000 coprocessor presented in an article in BYTE magazine by Steve Ciarcia of Circuit Cellar. The card offers increased performance for an IBM PC 5150 or similar PC. The Z8000 ran at a faster CPU speed, and it was a 16-bit CPU compared to the PC's 8-bit 4.77MHz CPU. The card communicated with the host, and you were supposed to be able to run Z8000 software seamlessly from your PC. I had the card, and I had the documentation, but the software itself. Not even Steve Ciarcia himself had a known copy of the software (most of his Circuit Cellar artifacts have been sent to a museum, and the software may or mot not be there). Anyhow, a friendly user, Hank, managed to find out about my quest for the lost software and found the missing disks! In this video I will install the card in my 5150, load the OS onto it, and run several commands. I'll exercise the basic compiler and perform a comparison of the Z8000 basic compiler to IBM BASICA, IBM BASIC COMPILER, and Z8000 C. I'll also try the Z80 CP/M emulation capabilities of the card. I'll show how it can be used as a ramdisk. For more vintage computer videos, see www.smbaker.com/

Опубликовано:

31 окт 2024

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 12

@derekchristenson5711 Год назад

What a fascinating expansion card! Too bad the Z8000 didn't get a wider share of the micro market than it did.

@RobertLeeAtYT Год назад

The Z8000 could run Unix actually. Zillog's port was called Zeus. That would have been awesome at this timeframe. Imagine what could have been had Zilog the vision to bootstrap the hobbyist community.

@JohnJones-oy3md Год назад

Great work. I thought the last video was going to be the end of the journey. You've got to love the ability to network with like-minded folks on obscure topics that the internet has allowed us.

@keithrobinson6511 Год назад

Posterity owes Hank a crate of beer! Will the software files be made publicly available?

@bwack Год назад

I watched a video about the Commodore 900 the other day, having the same CPU. Very interesting to see basic, compiled basic, and even a compiled C program and its speed. I love C :)

@douro20 Год назад

The good thing about the Z8000 is that it is still fairly common as a surplus chip.

@joshuamacdonald4913 Год назад

The 5150 was our first computer I would have loved this. I would love to find a working unit that wouldn’t break the bank

@DAVIDGREGORYKERR Год назад

AT&T UNIX compiled for the ZILOG Z8000 processor.

@squirlmy 8 месяцев назад

Is that System V??? Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") was a rival to Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) . There might be more stuff for Z8000 if you can dredge up BSD unix, or maybe not. That's a bit of a rabbit hole

@guidolehwalder9376 Год назад

BRUTPRIM starts (in the Video at 15:37) with N=3 in Line 40 - but the 2 is also a Prime-Number ;)

@pcuser80 Год назад

Can the trump card run in the background? like a server? Btw love the clicking sound of the model F The best keyboard made for the PC.

@smbakeryt Год назад

I don't see any technical reason why the hardware couldn't be used in the background, but the software generally seems launch a single program in the foreground, and interact with the console.