[rescue] 8 bit computer software

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Tim H. wrote:

> Some of the really old stuff might even be impossible to find hardware
> to read, I understand the census dept ran into that, and there was some
> talk of modifying some hardware in the smithsonian to get the data
> before it became unreadable.

I used to have (and probably sill do somewhere) have software that runs
under dos on a PC to read CPM format disks. It read something like 80
formats, but they were all 5 1/4 inch disks. How many of you out there
still have 5 1/4" drives? Now, how many have them in a working computer?

Things that it did not read were nonstandard floppies such as Apple II
GCR (yes, I had a CP/M system that lived inside an Apple II clone),
hardware sectored disks (a hole for each sector, instead of one index
mark), and of course less common formats such as audio cassette tapes,
Commodore Vic 20, C64, and C128, disks (although the CPM ones for the
C128 where standard floppies) etc and of course "square frisbee's" (8"
floppies).

The CPM floopy reading programs did die out quickly however, as soon as
it became common for those CPM systems that could read IBM floppies, to
have programs to read them.

The last few years I had a working CPM system, I was only able to get
public domain software for it on PC format floppies.

I also somewhere had (hopefully have) a copy of wordstar for the PC,
which was a direct port of the CPM version.

Intel at one time produced an 8080 -> 8088 assembly language translator.
This version of Wordstar I had was created by running the source code
through it and fixing enough bugs to get it to work. :-)

As for running the programs, there is an MS/DOS program that EMULATES a
Z80 and CPM on one of the PC Blue library disks. If you can read the old
files, then you can run the programs.

BTW, I also had a copy of a book called the "Wordstar Users Guide to 
Word Perfect" by W. S. Begone and W. P. Forever, published by Word Perfect.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson
Bloomberg L.P., BFM (Israel) 2 hours ahead of London, 7 hours ahead of New York.
Tel:  972-(0)3-754-1158 Fax 972-(0)3-754-1236 Email: gmendelson at bloomberg.com