cwr@pnet01.cts.com (Will Rose) (07/13/90)
I run ZCPR 3.3 on an SB-180, and wanted to run it also on my QX-10. I decided
the best way to play it was to move the BDOS down, and put the ZCPR buffers
between the BDOS and BIOS. However, I couldn't find out how (where) the QX10
kept the location of the BDOS for use in eg. the warm-boot code; in the end,
other tasks became more relevant. Bank 0 is full of goodies, by the way - I
remapped the keyboard to handle an ASCII unit, and found a lot of fascinating
graphics primitives (?); if Epson had only documented their software, the
QX-10 would have swept all before it. I look at a 600x400 screen, totally
unusable to me unless I program the graphics controller directly, and feel
very discouraged.
Jay Sage came across one of my pleas for help on a BBS, and wrote me a note
to say that a lot of people in his area were running the Z-system on QX-10s
with no real problems. I don't know which version they were running; it may
be later than 3.3. I recently got a price for the current ZCPR/ZRDOS to run
on a QX-10 from Jay Sage's company (~$140 total) and decided it just wasn't
cost effective. If you ran the new ZCPR with NOVADOS (is that possible?)
it would only cost you ~$75; pricey, but might be worth it.
Anway, good luck - Will
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SAGE@LL.LL.MIT.EDU (07/14/90)
This is in response to Will Rose's recent message. >> I decided the best way to play it was to move the BDOS down, and put the >> ZCPR buffers between the BDOS and BIOS. Even if you could figure out how to do this, it does not result in the best solution. There are quite a few CP/M programs that calculate addresses on the assumption that the BDOS is 0E00H below the BIOS entry point. They will fail after you have made your modification. You would also have to perform a code relocation on the BDOS, since it would now be running at a different address, and you would have to change the BIOS warmboot so that it would load the BDOS and CCP to the new addresses. >> However, I couldn't find out how (where) the QX10 kept the location of >> the BDOS for use in eg. the warm-boot code; Is it not kept on the system tracks of the diskette the way it is on other CP/M computers? >> Jay Sage came across one of my pleas for help on a BBS, and wrote me a >> note to say that a lot of people in his area were running the Z-system on >> QX-10s with no real problems. I don't know which version they were >> running; it may be later than 3.3. The ones I know about most recently are using NZCOM. It is not a question, in any case, of the ZCPR version. They all run more or less the same way. Later versions just have improved features. ZCPR33 is a MAJOR improvement over ZCPR3; ZCPR34, the latest version, has some nice additional features but nothing anyone really has to have. >> I recently got a price for the current ZCPR/ZRDOS to run on a QX-10 from >> Jay Sage's company (~$140 total) and decided it just wasn't cost >> effective. If you ran the new ZCPR with NOVADOS (is that possible?) it >> would only cost you ~$75; pricey, but might be worth it. There was apparently a major misunderstanding here. The cost of NZCOM is $70, and that provides a COMPLETE, automatically installing, and fully reconfigurable (statically and dynamically) Z-System, INCLUDING the ZRDOS disk operating system replacement code. It is very easy, if not trivial, to substitute NOVADOS or Z80DOS. In fact, you can change DOSs at will, even in the middle of a command line! You can then experiment easily with different versions of the DOS without having even to reboot the computer. The finest replacement DOS, in my opinion, is ZDOS (the ZSDOS/ZDDOS pair of datestamping DOSs). The full price of that package is $75; it is reduced to $60 for owners of NZCOM (or ZRDOS in any form obtained legitimately). There is no need to purchase ZDOS with NZCOM. If $70 stretches the budget too much and/or one would rather invest significant amounts of time, then a manual installation of ZCPR33 makes sense. This is not easy if you do not have source code for the BIOS or a version of MOVCPM that will move the whole system down in memory. Otherwise, there are many reasons, as I set forth in one of my TCJ columns, to prefer NZCOM -- for technical and performance reasons, not just for the ease of installation. The Ampro on which my Z-Node BBS is running still has a manually installed Z-System, but that is only because I don't have time to fix things that are not broken. If I were doing it over, I would certainly use NZCOM instead, as I do on my Televideo 803H and Amstrad PCW8512 (actually, Z3PLUS on the Amstrad).