Yes, those days are now really old...? ;)
?
I have a assortment of machines all speaking either CP/M or NS*DOS.
NS*DOS was a strange animal as it was basically bag and tag and tightly
bound to their hard sector controller.
?
The worst part of hard sector was it was only compatible with
itself (or same brand) making portability not happening.? I had
to?add a soft sector controller 765 based? and a 8" drive to get
compatibility with the world as in SSSD 8" CP/M format.
?
That said one of the more interesting things was to take the source
for NS*DOS and make it independent of the MDC controller.? The
result was a primitive file system but you could create directories
within directories.? It also was logical sector addressed and sector
size independant so that it could be 256 (original hard sector) or
512 (the double density version) or anything.??
?
ISIS was another OS that was truly intel and strange.
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Most exciting to me was being able to tech the CP/M machine how
to read a RX01 (also SSSD8")? with RT filesystem (radix50 file names).
With that my CP/M crate to talk to the world of PDP11s and even
VAX/VMS machines that had floppy (RX06) or over the DECNET
Either pipe..
?
Networking was easy I read a few papers and then
William? Wongs (microcomputing) and it was?then easy
if speed was not the major issue.?
?
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Most serial ports on s100 and similar could go fairly fast.? So
a protocol like?csma/cd at the physical level and then pile
stuff on it.? Only two signal lines signal and ground at
TTL levels.? I had easy interconnect wired into the BIOS
and 19.2 KB (faster always left a slow system behind).?
Proto networking between not less than 3 systems.
It would extend to 5 one being a LSI11/23 running
RT11.?
?
Allison
