CP/M and Color
nhin...@erols.com
LGeoCole
>Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
There were the Cromemco Dazzler board and Super Dazzler
that I've used on a CP/M system. My app was written
in BASIC and went through drivers that I wrote myself.
Never tried adapting the Cromemco drivers.
There were other graphics boards that were made to work
in S-100 computers.
There was the Color Computer. Don't know if it
ran CP/M or not, but it was early enough
to use it.
George C.
Alan C. Jones
bd.aol.com:
>> Someone asked:
>>Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
> He answered:
> There were the Cromemco Dazzler board and Super Dazzler
> that I've used on a CP/M system. My app was written
> in BASIC and went through drivers that I wrote myself.
> Never tried adapting the Cromemco drivers.
>
> There were other graphics boards that were made to work
> in S-100 computers.
>
> There was the Color Computer. Don't know if it
> ran CP/M or not, but it was early enough
> to use it.
>
> George C.
>
There was the Coleco Adam running CP/M. 16 colors with 256x192 resolution
for images and could display about 16 legible lines of text. One of the
colors was "transparent". Got myself in trouble once when I accidently set
the foreground and background console colors to the same color. Typing
blind was a trip!
Al Jones
Bruce
Color Computer"?).
There were a number of color terminals available, and some were used on CP/M
and MP/M systems.
As noted by others, color video cards were also available for the S100 bus.
I do not know of any 8 bit CP/M that 'supported' color. If you wrote an app.
for color you simply followed the control code set supplied by the
terminal/board manufacturer.
<nhin...@erols.com> wrote in message news:3D1A6302...@erols.com...
Exegete
The TRS-80 CoCo had a 6809 for it's cpu, unlike the TRS-80 Model(s) 1,
3, 4 which had the Z-80.
Roy
>
> George C.
>
>
Paul Schlyter
Bruce <blkj...@SPAMOUTsympatico.ca> wrote:
> <nhin...@erols.com> wrote in message news:3D1A6302...@erols.com...
>> Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
>
> InteColor made a desktop CP/M system with one of their color monitors ("The
> Color Computer"?).
> There were a number of color terminals available, and some were used on CP/M
> and MP/M systems.
> As noted by others, color video cards were also available for the S100 bus.
> I do not know of any 8 bit CP/M that 'supported' color. If you wrote an app.
> for color you simply followed the control code set supplied by the
> terminal/board manufacturer.
MBASIC, called GBASIC, which did support Apple II color graphics,
both lo-res and hi-res. Microsoft Fortran-80 also came in an Apple
II specific version which contained library functions for lo-res
color graphics on the Apple II -- the Apple II specific version was
considerablt cheaper than the standard version of Fortran-80.
--
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Christopher Browne
The CoCo's alternate OS was OS/9, which was kind of an "8 bit Unix."
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "sirhc"))
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/linux.html
"Jeez, got me. Unix is sorta like Heroin, It feels good for about 5 minutes
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iam...@witsend.com
S-100) which was 8080 or Z-80 based and therefore could use CP/M. And
the Dazzzler has already been mentioned. BTW, one of the rarest S-100
boards I own is the 1983 Micro-Mint EZ-Color - TI 9918A based; the
board also has a 76489A 4-channel sound generator. Presumable the 8'
disk that I have with it are drivers, but I don't have my 8" drives up
right now.
Bob Stek
Saver of Lost Sols
j.cammell
SpectraVideo also had Computers that ran CP/M in colour. Their SVBasic
had colour commands and here in New Zealand the local clubs wrote "Turbo
Pascal" code games to run the colour through a TV colour screen.
Jack
Jeffrey L. Susanj
changing from the default purple on black to green on black. It looks
much better.
Jeff S.
Ross Simpson
<nhin...@erols.com> wrote in message...
> Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
If you have for example CP/M-86 for the IBM with a standard colour
card (CGA,EGA,VGA) then writing applications which support colour is
just as good as a DOS application which supports colour! :-)
On an 8-bitter (such as an Amstrad CPC computer) which had CP/M Plus
(or CP/M v3.0 to some) there was a program which made it possible to
alter the colours on the command line (this is limited to 2 colours,
one for the text & one for the background out of a possible 27
colours). Not sure if CP/M2.2 has this capability on that though
(probably did!).
Writing applications for it in colour wouldn't of being a hassle (just
find a routine to change the video mode for that application & return
back to the default video mode after it's finish, colours ranged from
16 in 180x200, 4 in 320x200, 2 in 640x200).
Regards,
Ross.
John Elliott
: On an 8-bitter (such as an Amstrad CPC computer) which had CP/M Plus
: (or CP/M v3.0 to some) there was a program which made it possible to
: alter the colours on the command line (this is limited to 2 colours,
: one for the text & one for the background out of a possible 27
: colours).
The CP/M on the Spectrum +3 uses the same escape codes, but they
don't affect the whole screen, only text printed subsequently. The
colour numbers in the escape codes are the same, but the +3 has fewer
colours so (for example) 1 and 2 both map to blue.
--
------------- http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/index.html --------------------
John Elliott |BLOODNOK: "But why have you got such a long face?"
|SEAGOON: "Heavy dentures, Sir!" - The Goon Show
:-------------------------------------------------------------------------)
Bill Marcum
LGeoCole <lgeo...@aol.com> wrote:
>He asked:
>
>There was the Color Computer. Don't know if it
> ran CP/M or not, but it was early enough
> to use it.
>
compatible with CP/M. Of course the Commodore 128 could run CP/M, and
it had color.
Ross Simpson
> Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
I don't know if you've got the time to look through this site:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/
I thought it may give you a good idea as to which computers support
colour & which use CP/M.
Of course most machines which used the 8bit version of CP/M used a Z80
or in the case of some of the other machines (such as the Apple II
based machines, C64 etc) they had Z80 cards available to them to use
CP/M.
Unfortunately it doesn't quite give a good guide to which NON-Z80
machines run CP/M (with the card add-on option).
But it can clearly point out the colour computers.
Regards,
Ross.
henri-...@wxc.com.au
"Bruce" <blkj...@SPAMOUTsympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:x2GS8.47$j23....@news20.bellglobal.com...
price!). You could connect up to 8 of them if your S-100 bus allowed that
plus Colour Mixing Card. For full colour system you needed 12 S-100
sockets; 9 for the colour (I think there were 256 colours from a palette of
16.8 million, resolution was 490x512 pixels, monitor was 15MHz RGB), then
one card for SBC and one for floppy controller (which had a SCSI connection
to HD - an absolute must, at least 40 Meg). The software was developed by
SCION, all routines were written in Fortran. Each card had its own Z80
(4MHz) processor and 32 or 64 KB of DRAM. I still have the full system but,
I never managed to get more than three boards to work without interference
on the S-100 bus. It was a very expensive colour toy in its heydays and I
doubt that many were ever sold. Of course, there was a sound card which I
never manage to work properly. And, there was a support for colour graphics
HP plotter.
I wonder how many people did play with it. I have not seen any discussion
on this topic in this NG here before.
But, of course, there was IF800 CP/M 2.2 machine with 128KB of DRAM, 5M HD,
5.25 inch FD, 8 colour with GWBasic (for this machine) and built in 9 pin
dot matrix printer. Anyone remembers that?
JVB.
Arndt Oevermann
JS> The Commodore 128 has color and some
JS> limited support utilities. I like
JS> changing from the default purple on black
JS> to green on black. It looks
JS> much better.
The PHILIPS MSX2 has it, too and can run CP/M+.
Gut Goan
Arndt
... No Keyboard found, Press F1 to RESUME
___ QWKRR128 V5.10 [R]
Holger Petersen
>But, of course, there was IF800 CP/M 2.2 machine with 128KB of DRAM, 5M HD,
>5.25 inch FD, 8 colour with GWBasic (for this machine) and built in 9 pin
>dot matrix printer. Anyone remembers that?
Yes. With a very odd disk-formatting...
And it's "father", the Oki IF 800/30. A machine with built-in printer
and two 8-inch drives...
Yours, Holger
Alastair Preston
>
> I remember the Intecolor (?) - a stand-alone cpu+keyboard+monitor (not
> S-100) which was 8080 or Z-80 based and therefore could use CP/M.
That one had an 8080. I remember looking at one at a dealer circa 1979
or so. They had a problem with the integrated 8" floppy drive which sat
vertically beside the CRT, and was therefore subject to the odd bit of
interference...
Brilliant colour compared to other systems of the time, though.
Al Preston.
James Alexander
Bill Marcum wrote:
The Commodore 64 had a z80 cartridge with a modified form of cp/m but
unfortunately commodore early on did a slight modification to the video
chip and a rom revision which rendered their CP/M module unusable on most
64's. A friend of mine had one and neither he or I could ever get it
working on our 64's.
Charles Richmond
with my C64 alright. The problem was...the disk I/O was very
slow, as it used the 6510 processor in the C64 to do the I/O
and it went through the same old C64 floppy disk system. Also,
the CP/M disks were in a different format that the C64 native
disks.
You might check thrift shops or garage sales for older C64's
that could run your CP/M cartridge...
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
James Alexander
Charles Richmond wrote:
> James Alexander wrote:
> >
> > Bill Marcum wrote:
> >
> > The Commodore 64 had a z80 cartridge with a modified form of cp/m but
> > unfortunately commodore early on did a slight modification to the video
> > chip and a rom revision which rendered their CP/M module unusable on most
> > 64's. A friend of mine had one and neither he or I could ever get it
> > working on our 64's.
> >
> I have one of these Commodore CP/M cartridges, and it did work
> with my C64 alright. The problem was...the disk I/O was very
> slow, as it used the 6510 processor in the C64 to do the I/O
> and it went through the same old C64 floppy disk system. Also,
> the CP/M disks were in a different format that the C64 native
> disks.
>
> You might check thrift shops or garage sales for older C64's
> that could run your CP/M cartridge...
I wouldnt mind having another C64 sometime since mine went bust years ago. But
unfortunately the cpm setup I tried on it belonged to a friend I rarely see
anymore, and he sold all his commodore gear a few years ago :(
Come to think of it, I have an ATR8000 for my atari 800, it had serial,
parallel and floppy interfaces. it also was setup to run CPM but the disk I
got with mine was buggy, it even suppored an 80column colour mode.
Peter Hill
>Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
I have a Tatung Einstein. This has a TMS9129 VDP chip with 16k
dedicated memory - so they claimed it was 80K. It used a CPM clone
called XDOS by Crystal research. It displays 40x25 lines text, up to
256x192 pixels max in 16 colours but in an 8 pixel group only a
foreground and background colour can be set.
It would run CPM but really needed the optional 80 col mono expansion
card. Using Turbo Pascal (runs under XDOS) or BBC Basic (Z80)
(supplied in the box as the earlier XBAS was broken) it is possible to
display text on the mono 80 col card and colour graphics at the same
time. Mine has 2 250K (200K formatted) flippy 3 inch disks a 5 1/4
800K quad density disk and a 800K 3 1/2 disk.
The later Tatung Einstein 256 used the Yamaha V9938 chip with 193k
bytes and has a resolution of 512x192 in 16 colours selected from a
512 colour palette. They crippled it by removing support for double
sided disks, limited it to two drives, combined the printer and
joystick ports (now digital - were analog), supplied a naff TV based
monitor which was not up to 80 col text, deleted the user port.
--
Peter Hill
Can of worms - what every fisherman wants.
Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!
John Thompson
> On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 20:57:38 -0400, nhin...@erols.com wrote:
>
>>Did CP/M itself (or applications) ever support color?
>
> I have a Tatung Einstein. This has a TMS9129 VDP chip with 16k
> dedicated memory - so they claimed it was 80K. It used a CPM clone
> called XDOS by Crystal research. It displays 40x25 lines text, up to
> 256x192 pixels max in 16 colours but in an 8 pixel group only a
> foreground and background colour can be set.
[...]
Epson's QX-10/QX-16 computers also supported color. Epson briefly made a
very nice (for the time) 640x400 color display for them, but it was hard
to find. IIRC, NEC's original Multisync monitors could also be used.
--
-John (John.T...@attglobal.net)