Re: Past Blast - "Wonder Woman 1984" - Corp Guy Using PET

On 4/5/25 8:52 PM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 06/04/2025 00:47, c186282 wrote:

IMHO getting, or
   faking, the FDDs would be a little challenging.

 I wrote disk drivers a long time ago, for an 8" floppy...

   Yikes ... ALL the disk controllers back then were
   ultra-proprietary and not even very compatible
   if from the same company.
   DO have a few 8" floppies - for an LSI-11 system.
   Don't see ever USING them for anything, just as
   "historical artifacts".
   The only place I see 8" floppies now is on eBay.
   The drive UNITS ... forget it. I remember Shugart
   drives ... you put in the disk and it went "clunk"
   as you locked down the door  :-)

You could take a Pi Pico make it a Z80 running CP/M with a USB keyboard, and stuff the flash with all the CP/M software you would ever need.
Could even bit bang a parallel port...

   Via EMULATION you can make a LOT of little boards/PCs
   into faux Z80 systems. The Pico can likely out-perform
   the original hardware systems at this point. A PI4/5 by
   much more. One of the BMax boxes I have - surely at
   over 50 times as fast minimum - a faux 250-MHz Z80 :-)
   Oh, DID look on eBay (which I'll never buy from) ...
   lots of KayPro boxes in running order. Saw a K-10,
   which included a 10mb HDD, but fer sure you'll never
   find a new-ish HDD that'll run off that controller.
   Those old ones were MFM, maybe just FM. A number of
   K2's however and some K4's. Beware though, there
   were TWO K4's ... not entirely compatible. Yer best
   bet would be a basic K2, 2.5MHz Z80.
   LONG back I actually did some work with K2's and
   one of the Osbournes ... they were GOOD MACHINES
   and would GET IT DONE.
   Odd historical note ... AC Clarke wrote the "2010"
   script on a K2, sent it in from Sri Lanka by
   acoustic modem (300 baud max fer sure)  :-)