IBM DOS 3.30 on a Commodore BX700 CBM-II
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IBM DOS 3.30 on a Commodore BX700 CBM-II |
by Bill Degnan - 12/01/2017 14:35 |
 This stack of IEEE drives was used during testing of Michal Pleban's port of IBM DOS 3.30 to the CBM-II. Michal has a GITHUB page that explains how it works in detail but in short he created a PC compatibility layer that functions between the 8088 co-processor card on the CBM-II and the 6509 CPU on the main board. Click image for larger view.
 I used a Zoom Floppy with an IEEE adapter added to build the disks using CBM Transfer. This was tricky, the software does not work perfectly. I was able to write the D82 image to 8050 drive, the D80 image did not transfer correctly. Click image for larger view.
 A closeup of the boot screen. Click image for larger view.
 The CBM BX700 booting IBM DOS 3.30. The little black circle on the keyboard is one of the keyboard's rubber feet, which fell off. It's not part of the keyboard. Click image for larger view.
Commodore sold very few CBM-II computers before cancelling the entire line altogether. They initially announced an 8088 co-processor card option for this computer, but very little commercial software was actually created for it other than by Handic. Internally Commodore played around with a port of IBM 1.25 DOS but it was not finished. Just for fun, Michal created an IBM 3.30 port to see if it could be done. My testing of the port revealed a lot of what Michal found, there are too many incompatibilities to make the port practical so far, but the work continues... IBM DOS 3.30 for CBM=II with 8088 co-processor can be downloaded in D80 / D82 disk image format here. (Link to local copies and the GITHUB repository. Reply |
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