Date   : Mon, 24 Jan 2005 19:27:01 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: Need Help Identifying Parts Of My BBC

On Mon, 2005-01-24 at 16:13 +0000, Charles Blackburn wrote:
> >There are two versions of the Torch copro - standard with just a Z80
> CPU, and then the 'Tosca' board that has a high 
> >speed serial interface local to the Z80's bus. The latter seem to be
> horribly rare (it's possible they were only sold 
> >with Torch machines that used the BBC as I/O, rather than being sold as
> an addition to the BBC)
> 
> Well thnx for that jules, the z80 bord I have has got the follow ic's on
> it:
> 
> Z80, mitsubishi 83160 - M5L8255AP (uart iirc) - R6522AP (PIO?) and
> various other logic chips

Aha, that's a standard Torch board - the Tosca also has a 40 pin Zilog
SIO IC for the serial output. No biggie unless you like collecting
hardware like I do - I've never seen any software that takes advantage
of it anyway!

As Mike says, the Z80 should do some stuff without any disks (all the
basic functionality is in ROM). The standard software that shipped on
disk seems to have been Perfect Writer, Perfect Calc, and Perfect Filer
(along with manuals), but CP/N (i.e. the OS) is in ROM.

I've never seen a comparison between CP/N and CP/M to see what the
differences are, although doubtless I have the necessary details buried
in a manual *somewhere*

cheers

Jules