Date   : Fri, 11 Dec 1987 00:18:58 GMT
From   : tikal!sigma!bill@beaver.cs.washington.edu (William Swan)
Subject: Re: An Idea: An Omnibus Reference Work for CP/M

In article <4276@ecsvax.UUCP> tcamp@ecsvax.UUCP (Ted A. Campbell) writes:
>For those of us who still work with CP/M programming, something I've
>always wished for would be a largish book giving terminal escape
>sequences, disk formats, asynchronous communications info, and 
>other related computer-specific info for the plethora of CP/M 
>machines.  [...]
>I wondered if this could be something we could undertake as an 
>online project. [...]
>Maybe while we're at it, we could include basic stuff like 8080
>and Z80 mnemonics, CP/M and CP/M Plus BDOS and BIOS entry 
>points and the like.  Maybe this would give us an opportunity
>to develop something like an RSX that could deal with a standard
>TERMCAP, allowing the development of near-universal screen-oriented
>CP/M programs.  Any interest out there?

Sounds like a nice idea, and I could contribute info about one machine,
but I wonder how useful this might be in the long run. I suspect that
most CP/M users are now fairly knowledgeable (the dummies have gone to
MSDOS now :-), and certainly those who would be calling the BBSs would
have the knowledge to apply overlay patches for their system.

The fear I have is the plethora of terminals (take a look at the Unix
termcap files - you could extract a *lot* of info right there!), and of
weird disk formats that would require very specific knowledge of *in
advance* to handle.

For example of the latter, my Alspa machine (8") ALWAYS makes track 0
single density, track 1 double, and the rest of the disk as selected
(unless you are dealing with what it calls an IBM format, which is 
all SSSD). Now to confuse the issue, it does not translate double-density
sectors in the BIOS, it pre-formats them skewed!! (It will work if the
disk is formatted with the sectors in order, but oh, how slow it runs!)
I have no idea what the 5-1/4" disks are like.

As far as termcap capabilities, doesn't ZCPR3 make this available?

Are you proposing to collect the information?
-- 
William Swan  {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!bill