Anyone know what a Pied Piper is?
John Switzer
I ran across two Pied Piper systems at a local surplus store and they
appear to be CP/M computers (but no books or disks, sigh). However, I
have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that they might be
Apple II clones (which would be equally neat, IMHO). Anyone have any
idea? One machine has one built-in 5.25" drive and the second has a second
external disk drive connected via a ribbon cable, a la Apple IIs, if
that helps.
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arog on BIX
John,
The Pied Pipper is a Z-80 64K system. The disks are 'Quad'
density meaning that the have the same track/cylindar format
as DSDD disk but instead of the normal for a DSDD disk of
40 cylindars there are 80. It Requires the same oxide
as on DSDD disks and can not be expected to write to
"HD" media.
Also, as I recall, it was one of the systems that broke
the general rule that track-0 was Single Density, even
on an otherwise double density disk. With the PP, trk-0
is Also DD.
That also means that if someone can create a disk image
for you, that almost any of the brain.dead 'ps' floppy
controllers can write out the image to a 5-1/4 HD
drive that thinks that it's working with 720k medial...
but then it is.
Alan Ogden
ar...@BIX.com
Eric J. Korpela
In article <5an76i$j...@shell1.aimnet.com>,
John Switzer <jswi...@aimnet.com> wrote:
>I ran across two Pied Piper systems at a local surplus store and they
>appear to be CP/M computers (but no books or disks, sigh). However, I
>have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that they might be
>Apple II clones (which would be equally neat, IMHO). Anyone have any
>idea? One machine has one built-in 5.25" drive and the second has a second
>external disk drive connected via a ribbon cable, a la Apple IIs, if
>that helps.
I saw those at Weird Stuff, too. They are, in fact, CP/M computers. I don't
know what the processor is. Finding a boot disk could be a problem. I didn't
check out what it had for monitor connections. I'm guessing NTSC or
RF modulated NTSC. Other than that, I know nothing about them.
Eric
--
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