Date   : Tue, 14 Aug 1990 12:14:33 EST
From   : SAGE@LL.LL.MIT.EDU
Subject: SuperBrain BIOS and ZCPR

   Dan Fandrich said, "I'd love to get ZCPR going on my machine, but without
full BIOS sources that's next to impossible."

   Not so on several accounts!  First, with NZCOM you can have a full Z-
System running in a matter of minutes on just about any CP/M-2.2 computer,
including the SuperBrain.  There is no need to tinker with the BIOS at all.

   Second, if you are not willing to spend the money for NZCOM and you have
MOVCPM for your machine, you can use it to create a version of CP/M with
some free memory above the top of the BIOS (relocated downward).  After
that, it is not terribly difficult to patch the BIOS coldboot code to
initialize the ZCPR buffers and to replace the CP/M CCP with ZCPR3x.  You
still won't have as flexible and configurable a system this way, but I did
this many times before Joe Wright came up with the autoinstall concept used
in NZCOM.

   Even if you don't have MOVCPM, there is still hope.  As the owner of the
QX-10 mentioned here recently (sorry, I did not note his name), you can
fairly easily create your own simplified version of NZCOM for your
particular installation.  You would boot CP/M and then run your own loader
program that would install the virtual BIOS some distance below the real
BIOS entry point.  I described this in some detail in a TCJ column about two
years ago.

-- Jay Sage