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Can I use my Atari as a terminal for my '70s era Northstar Horizon CP/M box


bobotech

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I have an old Northstar Horizon from around 77 or so. It was one of the first S100 computers (think Altair) that didn't have the front programming switches. I have never powered it on or used it due to just not knowing much about it.

 

Anyway, I wonder if it would be possible to somehow use the Atari as the keyboard/terminal for the Northstar? Any suggestions?

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Well wouldn't the drive only be used to load the terminal program? I mean my Northstar already has 2 floppy drives in it. I know I will need the CP/M floppies for the Northstar so it can at least boot, but I just don't know if its possible to hook up the serial port on the N* to the serial on say my P:R: Connection device.

 

Are you somehow loading CP/M off of your Indus GT drive?

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Well wouldn't the drive only be used to load the terminal program? I mean my Northstar already has 2 floppy drives in it. I know I will need the CP/M floppies for the Northstar so it can at least boot, but I just don't know if its possible to hook up the serial port on the N* to the serial on say my P:R: Connection device.

 

Are you somehow loading CP/M off of your Indus GT drive?

The Indus GT runs everything. CP/M is running on the drive's Z80 and internal 64K of RAM (upgraded). The Atari is simply used for its keyboard and video.

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The Indus GT runs everything. CP/M is running on the drive's Z80 and internal 64K of RAM (upgraded). The Atari is simply used for its keyboard and video.

Really? Wow! That is quite something. Is that something that has been done before? I have never heard of it before.

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The Indus GT runs everything. CP/M is running on the drive's Z80 and internal 64K of RAM (upgraded). The Atari is simply used for its keyboard and video.

Really? Wow! That is quite something. Is that something that has been done before? I have never heard of it before.

See http://trub.atari8.i...ref=cpm_en for more info. It has been available for a very long time, but also extremely rare.

 

I have a small bit of info on my blog here http://www.atariage.com/forums/blog/341/entry-8630-indus-gt-cpm-experiments/ with more tutorials to follow.

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Thanks for the blog entry and videos Stephen - they're absolutely fascinating. Gotta get me one of those drives one day!

No problem - I must say though, that after using Last Word on IDE+2.0, going back to WordStar on slow floppy drive is a big step backwards in speed and usability.

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Northstar eh? My dad had that operating system on his Sol Terminal 20. Remember the "North Star DOS" on the load up. Freaking awesome. You have Trek 80 on your Northstar based computer?

 

Anyway, as a terminal, have both running term programs, a serial cable with a null modem adaptor, should be no problem.

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Northstar eh? My dad had that operating system on his Sol Terminal 20. Remember the "North Star DOS" on the load up. Freaking awesome. You have Trek 80 on your Northstar based computer?

 

Anyway, as a terminal, have both running term programs, a serial cable with a null modem adaptor, should be no problem.

 

I have never fired it up. Actually that will be my first probglem. How to get bootable floppies for the machine.

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I just remembered I have a kit that let you take an S-100 card and implant it into a keyboard and it is a total terminal. Could you use this? I'll get specs for you with part numbers and everything in a bit, have to dig it up.

 

Not sure where to get floppies, might want to ask over at vintage-computer forums, see if anyone can burn you off a few. Great bunch of guys over there.

 

Nathan

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Here's my latest blog post, showing two CP/M word processors running on the Indus GT. Sorry for the terrible cell-phone shaky cam, I'll soon be taking & posting much cleaner videos.

That's great Stephen. That 80 column handler could probably be speeded up greatly by using the display list to scroll sections of the screen. What's editing feel like?

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