🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <84...@ucrmath.ucr.edu> star...@ucrmath.ucr.edu (aaron greenwood) writes:
>A friend of mine bought a pc at a swap meet for $10.00.  The crt, keyboard,
>cpu, and two 5.25 inch floppy drives are all in one housing.  On the back
>
>North Star Advantage
>
>Does anyone know anything about this computer such as what OS it users,
>type CPU, ect.
>

Like everybody else with an opinion, I think it uses CP/M for an OS and
a Z80 CPU.  Somebody suggested that the drives might be hard-sectored,
and I don't know about that.

One problem is that you can't just find a CP/M disk and use it, since the
BIOS in a CP/M system is not in ROM, but is written for each individual
machine and resides on disk.  Digital Research wrote the BDOS (Basic Disk
Operating System), the CCP (Console Command Processor) and the utilities,
and the vendor (or hacker :-) wrote the basic I/O routines.

Therefore, you need a CP/M system disk configured for this particular
machine.

Another interesting fact is that there was never any particular standard
for CP/M diskettes (except for the 8" single-sided single-density) so
that even if you find a system disk, there is no reason to believe that
any given 5.25" CP/M diskette will be readable by that system.

Have fun!

DHT