Z-80 Plus
 | |
| Z-80 Plus | |
| Manufacturer | Applied Engineering |
|---|---|
| Year | 1983 |
| Type | Z80 Coprocessor Card |
| Original Price | $139 |
| Compatibility | II, II+, IIe, IIGS |
Applied Engineering's version of the Microsoft SoftCard was the Z-80 Plus, a coprocessor card that allowed the CP/M operating system to be run on an Apple II. The Z-80 Plus let the Apple II user tap into a large library of popular software that was only available for CP/M at the time such as Wordstar, Turbo Pascal, and dBase. Microsoft also sold several programming languages that ran under CP/M, including BASIC, COBOL, and FORTRAN.
This card was basically a clone of the SoftCard, as were most other Z80 cards for the Apple II. Applied Engineering may have produced two versions of the card. The card pictured above, has a red LED at the back of the card, as seen in the early AE catalog. Later catalog entries show a version with a green LED at the front of the card.
Applied Engineering furnished a version of CP/M called CP/AM. The supplied sytem disk had a few more utilities on it than the disk that came with the SoftCard, most notably RAMDRIVE, which allowed CP/AM to use a memory card in the Apple //e auxiliary slot as a solid state disk drive. Other extra utilities included NSWEEP, a file transfer program, and TED, a line editor that featured on-screen help.
Resources
Z-80 Plus Manual in PDF format. This manual covers the Z-80 Plus hardware and CP/AM 4.0B [1]
CP/AM 5.1 Manual in PDF format. [1]
The following are DOS-ordered disk images of 5.25" Apple CP/M format diskettes. Use Asimov, DiskMaker, or a similar program to create bootable CP/AM disks:
- CP/AM 4.0B System Disk - System Disk supplied with the Z-80 Plus. This version will run in a 48K Apple II and only supports 5-1/4" disks.
- CP/AM 5.1 System Disk - This updated version of Applied Engineering's CP/M requires 64 MB of memory and supports 3.5" disks and Sider hard drives.
- CP/AM 5.1 Utility Disk - CP/AM 5.1 Utility Disk . This disk contains the utilities for installing CP/AM 5.1 on a Sider hard drive.
Applied Engineering catalog pages on the Z-80 Plus Card:[2]
- Z-80 Plus Page from an early AE Catalog
- Z-80 Plus catalog entry from the Summer/Fall 1986 AE catalog
- Z-80 Plus catalog entry from the 1990 AE Catalog
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 File courtesy of www.apple-iigs.info
- ↑ Thanks to Wayne Stewart for the Applied Engineering catalog pages
