CP/M TCP/IP (was Re: CP/M coding question)

From: J.C. Wren <jcwren_at_jcwren.com>
Date: Thu May 30 16:12:26 2002

        Have you looked at the WatCom stack? Compilable with Borland (free, these
days). I dunno if I'd rip the ROMs out of the machine, or just use a solid
state IDE disk drive (read: Compact FLASH). Considering how cheap those
are, it'd be a lot easier than generating ROM'able code. And you'd have a
DOS environment to debug in.

        And actually, if you're going to do all that, just run the KA9Q or JNOS
router stuff.

        --John

-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org]On
Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 16:55
To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: CP/M TCP/IP (was Re: CP/M coding question)


> I'm starting to have some second thoughts about how I'm going to do this.
> I'm considering an external 'black box' that will connect to a PPP server
> on one end and have a RS-232 connection on the other that will provide

Not realy the same thing, but related...

I've considered pulling the BIOS ROMs from an old XT or AT system
(preferably IBM as I have the schematics...) and replacing them with some
kind of TCP/IP stack. Stick an ISA ethernet card in one of the slots (or
a serial card and use SLIP or PPP) and fill up the other slots with
whatever I/O cards would be appropriate to connect to the CP/M box or
whatever. Without the IBM BIOS getting in the way, the 8088 should have
enough power for this, and without the BIOS there'd be no reason to have
a video card or keyboard (or disk drives).

Has anyone ever tried this, or anything like it? I really don't feel like
writing all the code from scratch...

-tony
Received on Thu May 30 2002 - 16:12:26 BST