The Joys of 8 Bits!
- Wouldn't you rather drive a sports-car than a semi-trailer?
- How about being able to actually understand the insides of your computer?
- Or even take a soldering iron & change things around yourself?
- Tired of forking out for another 200MB each year, to accommodate Behemoth Software's latest
bug fix - oops - upgrade?
8-bit computing is for you!
- It's lean!
- It's mean!
- It's here! (and has been for years)
Disk-based 8-bit systems are commonly based on the Z-80 CPU from Zilog, Inc.,
or its big brother, the Z180. The standard system software is
CP/M (tm), which is the base from which MS-DOS (tm) originated. CP/M applications were formerly available on
SimTel, however this appears to be defunct.
here.
Issues relating to CP/M systems are regularly discussed on UseNet in comp.os.cpm
See also John Elliott's CP/M archive
To run CP/M, you can try one of the emulator programs running on a PC.
For hardware platforms, see my Z80182 8-bit CPU board now discontinued.
If embedded computing is your thing, you may care to try my freeware emulator for the Motorola 6805.
Also Simplex-III, my old discrete-TTL processor design.