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SRAM-Charger for Indus-GT - interest poll


tf_hh

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Hi,

 

another little project is made by me: A SRAM-Charger board for the Indus GT drive (and compatible ones). This board enables the usage of CP/M inside the drive´s electronic (based on a Z80 CPU).

 

The PCB is already tested and ready. Here are two pictures:

 

post-15670-0-04286700-1533238160.png

post-15670-0-63940500-1533238174_thumb.png

 

Because this is a very special thing and I assume that not a huge amount of people want one, I want ask for your interest about such a board. The final price will be something between 8 and 12 Euros each.

 

Please show your interest here, if you want one (or more). I will collect the answer for 2-3 weeks and will made some pieces then. They´re offered as my other projects then in my "info pdf".

 

A very big "Thank you!" to Eric Bacher, who enables me to make this thing real.

 

Best regards, Jurgen

 

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I remember using CPM on an Osborne running WordStar and a database program I think around 1985. Pretty much all text based applications if I recall. So what makes this so attractive on the A8 vs. running equivalent Atari native applications such as The Last Word and SynFile, SybCalc, ect.? Seems like any native Atari application would run circles around a similar CPM application.

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I remember using CPM on an Osborne running WordStar and a database program I think around 1985. Pretty much all text based applications if I recall. So what makes this so attractive on the A8 vs. running equivalent Atari native applications such as The Last Word and SynFile, SybCalc, ect.? Seems like any native Atari application would run circles around a similar CPM application.

 

Probably the same reason that we would consider using The Last Word and SynFile, SybCalc, ect over Office 2016. Because we can! And we're a little odd.

 

I already have an Indus GT Super Charger, from the run Tregare did a few years back. It's fun to boot the Indus into CP/M mode and play around with those old apps. I've especially enjoyed playing Zork in native 80 column mode, but be warned - it is pretty slow!

 

Glad to see this great expansion option being produced again.

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I remember using CPM on an Osborne running WordStar and a database program I think around 1985. Pretty much all text based applications if I recall. So what makes this so attractive on the A8 vs. running equivalent Atari native applications such as The Last Word and SynFile, SybCalc, ect.? Seems like any native Atari application would run circles around a similar CPM application.

Pure nostalgia. I ran an ATR-8000 and CP/M 2.2 around 1987 and had an awesome graphing program called "Energraphics". You couldn't see the result until you printed in on paper, but it made report quality XY scatter plots and did polynomial curve fitting. I had Wordstar, but like you surmised, Atariwriter was a better application. Was there a FORTRAN for CP/M? Back in the day, I always wondered why Atari never had a FORTRAN for the 8 bit. I guess it was too close to BASIC. I could format a 1.2Mb floppy as a 77 track 8" floppy and you had a 1MB floppy for the 8-bit that MYDOS could write to. Would have never had that capability without CP/M and my ATR-8000.

Edited by ACML
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Ok that all makes sense, just checking to see if there were a lot of CPM applications that never had an Atari equivalent that would make this a must have item. But yes I can see the appeal from a nostalgic aspect, which is probably why a bunch of us are here in the first place ;) .

 

Besides the CPM aspect, is there any other Atari related benefits of having the extra RAM in the Indus?

 

Lastly without opening the case, is there any way to peek and/or poke to see if an Indus drive already has a RAM-Charger installed?

 

Reason I am asking all of this, is because I have a very nice Indus drive sitting over here that I wouldn't want to see it miss out on this new run of boards if it made sense for my use.

 

 

Probably the same reason that we would consider using The Last Word and SynFile, SybCalc, ect over Office 2016. Because we can! And we're a little odd.

 

I already have an Indus GT Super Charger, from the run Tregare did a few years back. It's fun to boot the Indus into CP/M mode and play around with those old apps. I've especially enjoyed playing Zork in native 80 column mode, but be warned - it is pretty slow!

 

Glad to see this great expansion option being produced again.

 

 

Pure nostalgia. I ran an ATR-8000 and CP/M 2.2 around 1987 and had an awesome graphing program called "Energraphics". You couldn't see the result until you printed in on paper, but it made report quality XY scatter plots and did polynomial curve fitting. I had Wordstar, but like you surmised, Atariwriter was a better application. Was there a FORTRAN for CP/M? Back in the day, I always wondered why Atari never had a FORTRAN for the 8 bit. I guess it was too close to BASIC. I could format a 1.2Mb floppy as a 77 track 8" floppy and you had a 1MB floppy for the 8-bit that MYDOS could write to. Would have never had that capability without CP/M and my ATR-8000.

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Besides the CPM aspect, is there any other Atari related benefits of having the extra RAM in the Indus?

I've yet to witness it myself, but what I gather from the writings of others is that with RamCharger+Super SyncroMesh, the drive would to full disk read caching (buffering) at the sector level, maybe up to 64K worth? So most of a disk could be stored in RAM and not have to spin up the disk access after the 1st time. Much more buffer compared to single track buffering like Happy/Speedy/Duplicator.

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