secrist@msdsws.DEC.COM (Richard Secrist, Digital Equip. Corp. USA) (11/29/88)
You can get tons of technical info about NECs from either NEC or private sources I've talked about in prior notes regarding '8500. They're all closely related -- you might even say incestuous. I'm on the road and don't have the info I posted earlier, but those sources should be able to get you any about-this-box and can-I-buy-it questions answered. I can post it again later and/or you could post specific questions here where we can answer them. Overgeneralizing most of this class of CP/M laptop can run generic CP/M things in truncated TPAs (~32K) without additional hardware, and with more plug in gadgets can be full-fledged CP/M boxes with disks and everything. You can't mung the BIOS and stuff the same way since they're all ROMed into place, but CP/M is still alive and well (although it's not "getting better," and the liquidators are "bringing out their dead" [MF-DOS boxes are getting so cheap that CP/M systems don't draw much of a price anymore]). rcs