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Please note also - THIS BLOG ENDS HERE WITH THE LAST ENTRY FROM NOVEMBER 9th 2021.

I have prepared a new blog with wordpress at https://vintagecomputing.info !!!

Thank you.

Here are my favorite list of old (more than 20 years old) PC portables:

Number one - a Compaq Portable (with an Intel 8088 CPU):


Number two - an IBM PC Portable (Type 5155, with an Intel 8088 CPU):


Number three - a Compaq Portable II (with an Intel 80286 CPU, AT compatible):



Number four - a Compaq Portable III (also with an Intel 80286 CPU, AT compatible):

Most innovative, with a Gas Plasma Screen, really portable.
Picture shows Windows 3.0 running ;-)

My favorite portable PC here - NUMBER 3 !
Still fast enough for Word for DOS 5.5, reliable, and artless ;-)

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ONE ?

I have added a page about a very useful CP/M shell, which can be seen as a CCP replacement, too. It was a very expensive ($150) utility, so this could be one reason why it was not wide spreaded nor "popular". But New Generation Systems microshell (version 2.0) was very handy, it was easily possible to create mighty shell scripts, as usual with UNIX (but not with CP/M).

See for more info my new page at http://www.z80.eu/microshell.html


Also, during my investigations about the above mentioned microshell, I found a Norton Commander alike program on a czech web page, called NIPSOFT Commander.
Seems to be very sophisticated, unfortunately I am not able to translate czech language into english.
It was created for the MZ-800 CP/M 2.2 clone, but I guess it will run on any CP/M 2.2, may be somebody have to modify the screen control commands - sources included !

See for more info at http://www.scav.ic.cz/download/MZ-800/M ... /PROGS/NC/


P.S.: If somebody is able to translate the man page, plz give me an info.

Addendum (14-July): It will definitely not run on a plain vanilla CP/M 2.2, because the MZ-800 had an specially adapted and in parts completely rewritten CP/M 2.2 clone.
Also, there is no source code available, that makes this harder ;-(

There is a really refreshing article about the S100 bus, the history around, nice pictures of a S100 bus system and cards at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/01/s100/

Don't miss that article, regardless of the fact that it's nothing really new told, but I am convinced that it make appetite to get your own S100 bus soon ;-)

Yes, I didn't recognize it. But there were not many 'Zorba' produced 'til 1984.
And as far as I can found any kind of info, this computer wasn't selled in europe.
It looks similar to a Kaypro or a Philips P2000 (not the colors, but the concept), and it has also a 4 MHz Z80A inside. Also, the disk capacity was similar to the Kaypro 4 ... 380KB per drive. Like the Philips P2000, there was also a 8088 coprocessor card available.

For more information, just visit this very informative pages, which were hosted from Gaby Chaudry also:

http://www.zorba.z80.de/

I was looking for a german article about TCP/IP for CP/M and the progress this project made, and I saw there are some utilities like tftp and ping now available (still looking for a real FTP.COM...).
Then I was looking what the site offers also.
And I was surprised that somebody implemented already a two pane file copier/renamer/deleter/executer (= like the Norton Commander for DOS/Windows or later the Midnight Commander for Linux represents).
See http://susowa.homeftp.net
For download of the binary and source visit the download detail page.
It's implemented with the help of submit (it does not do everything by calling CP/M APIs, but it looks still awesome, also because of using colors for different info windows of course.
So shame on me that I didn't finish my own project :-(

But I will do it this year, with the help of longer holidays for sure.