ded@aplvax.UUCP (12/01/83)
I recently placed a long distance call to a company called "Sritek" in Cleveland, Ohio, to ask them a few questions about one of their products. They took my name and number, and promised to return my call -- but didn't. Ah well, it's happened before; mistakes happen. But rather than make a second call, I thought I'd take my question to the net. Sritek (and others) advertise a Z-80 plug-in card which supposedly will allow PC users to run CP/M programs. Sounds good to me; I have gobs of CP/M software. But... What troubles me is their claim to run word processing software. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know CP/M supports only the printing of strings and characters, NOT screen addressing by row and column, which my word processor appears to use. Therefore it would seem that word processors generate, say, Televideo escape sequences, which work just fine on my Osborne but would wreak havoc on an IBM. How is this handled, if at all? Are these CP/M plug-in boards limited in use (most of my interesting stuff does screen oriented things) or do other plug-in boards and/or software provide a way to supply the necessary emulation, etc.? Like, I'd like to know, you know? Don Davis JHU/APL ...decvax!harpo!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!ded ...rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!aplvax!ded --