[NBLUG/talk] Commodore nostalgia

[Bruce Schadel]

I've been lurking on this list for years for no good reason other than 
to keep me humble. I bought my stepson a TI-99 in the early '80s and 
taught him hex arithmetic. He soon was creating sprites and games and is 
now a computer professional.

I was recently laid off from a large company, but I wasn't too unhappy 
to leave with severance pay after 36 years. The company has a pair of 
scanning electron microscopes specialized for measuring features on 
3-inch semiconductor wafers. Those machines are almost irreplaceable, 
but they are controlled by Japanese 680x0-based computers running 
CP/M-68K. Data interchange is via 8-inch floppy.

There is a professor out there who has written a PC-based emulator for 
CP/M-68K. It should be possible therefore to replace the SORD machines 
with PCs. A few obstacles remain. One is to get files off the big 
floppies. I think they can then be converted to S-record format (if they 
are not already) and/or reverse assembled. Secondly, the emulator does 
not include serial IO--that would have to be added. Third, the file that 
functions as a BIOS would have to rewritten and compiled.

I wish I'd had time to devote/waste on that project. I mention it now in 
case one of you, filled with nostalgia for character-oriented screens 
and tiny OSes feels like moonlighting. I suppose I should attempt it 
myself now that I'm retired, but I'm not sure I'm up to it. I'm just an 
electronics/vacuum technician, not a computer professional, and I have a 
lot of other things to attend to just now. As this is pretty OT, contact 
me off-list.

Bruce Schadel

"The secret of life is self-delusion"