9484cbs@hou2b.UUCP (07/26/83)
These comments on the Zenith Z100 were reported in Sextant: The Independent Magazine for the Entire Zenith Computer Community (Summer, 1983 issue). Most of them are from a question and answer session at the Eighth West Coast Computer Faire in March of this year. "Barry Watzman of Heath/Zenith recently told Sextant that standard CP/M-86 will be available for the Z100 'probably in 1983.' This is a little sooner than planned, Watzman said. CP/M-86 wasn't originally a very high priority item, until Zenith software developers say that it had been announced in a Zenith Data Systems software catalog - by mistake. ... "Unfortunatley, it has been more difficult than was anticipated to make IBM PC software work on the Z100. software written for the PC is 'optimized' to take best advantage of the IBM's keyboard and screen display functions; the Z100 keyboard and screen display are different. Those functions are controlled by read-only memory (ROM). Zenith Data Systems expects to release a new ROM this summer which will duplicate more functions of the PC's ROM, enabling Z100 uses to use the developing PC-compatible software pool." ... "I've found a 'kludgy' way to use escape sequences on the Z100. I use the 'insert special character' feature of an editor to create a text file consisting of the appropriate escape codes. Then I went back to Z-DOS and TYPEd the file to the screen... There should be an easier way, though." ... Barry Watzmann on CP/M Plus: "I cannot say definitively that we will or won't [provide it]. It all is a question of priorityies. My personal feelin, to the extent that it matters, is that we should do 3.0 (CP/M Plus) on the Z100 as an upgrade to CP/M-85. I would hope that we might be able to do that in August, give or take a couple of months." ... Barry Watzmann on Concurrent CP/M: "We are not currently working on Concurrent CP/M or MP/M [the multiuser version]. I personally wish that we were, but the fact of the matter is, we aren't. We are working on some networking stuff." ... Barry Watzmann on MS-DOS 2.0: "MS-DOS 2.0 we will definitely do. There's no question about that. There has been some discussion internally that some of the resources to get CP/M-86 out and some of the resources to get MS-DOSthey're allocated to CP/M-86, and that may change. I kind of don't want to see that change; I'd like to see CP/M-86 out already. But we will definitely be doing MS-DOS 2.0. I'm tempted to back off on 'definitely', but I believe we will see it this year for certain, possible by the late second or early third quarter. There will be extreme pressure on us, with the IBM announcement, to get that out." ... Barry Watzmann on the 8087: "Yes, alot of thought has been given to that [the 8087]. I don't have an answer for you right now. But we have a strong desire to fit the 8087 to our machine, and there is work going on to accomplish that goal... I am hopeful that, at some point before the end of the year, we willbe able to make an announcement regarding that." Watzmann also Announced that Microsoft FORTRAN and COBOL would soon be shipped and that UCSD p-System, version IV would be shipped in May. One additional note: Barry Watzmann, the Zenith Data Systems computer product line director, resigned from Zenith at the end of May, so he cannot be held to these words. Ken Lee hou2b!9484cbs