Uploaded May 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
About 6 months ago, I bought a used "Trump Card" off of eBay. This card is a Zilog Z8000 coprocessor presented in an article in BYTE magazine by Steve Ciarcia of Circuit Cellar. The card offers increased performance for an IBM PC 5150 or similar PC. The Z8000 ran at a faster CPU speed, and it was a 16-bit CPU compared to the PC's 8-bit 4.77MHz CPU. The card communicated with the host, and you were supposed to be able to run Z8000 software seamlessly from your PC. I had the card, and I had the documentation, but the software itself. Not even Steve Ciarcia himself had a known copy of the software (most of his Circuit Cellar artifacts have been sent to a museum, and the software may or mot not be there). Anyhow, a friendly user, Hank, managed to find out about my quest for the lost software and found the missing disks! In this video I will install the card in my 5150, load the OS onto it, and run several commands. I'll exercise the basic compiler and perform a comparison of the Z8000 basic compiler to IBM BASICA, IBM BASIC COMPILER, and Z8000 C. I'll also try the Z80 CP/M emulation capabilities of the card. I'll show how it can be used as a ramdisk. For more vintage computer videos, see smbaker.com
About 6 months ago, I bought a used "Trump Card" off of eBay. This card is a Zilog Z8000 coprocessor presented in an article in BYTE magazine by Steve Ciarcia of Circuit Cellar. The card offers increased performance for an IBM PC 5150 or similar PC. The Z8000 ran at a faster CPU speed, and it was a 16-bit CPU compared to the PC's 8-bit 4.77MHz CPU. The card communicated with the host, and you were supposed to be able to run Z8000 software seamlessly from your PC. I had the card, and I had the documentation, but the software itself. Not even Steve Ciarcia himself had a known copy of the software (most of his Circuit Cellar artifacts have been sent to a museum, and the software may or mot not be there). Anyhow, a friendly user, Hank, managed to find out about my quest for the lost software and found the missing disks! In this video I will install the card in my 5150, load the OS onto it, and run several commands. I'll exercise the basic compiler and perform a comparison of the Z8000 basic compiler to IBM BASICA, IBM BASIC COMPILER, and Z8000 C. I'll also try the Z80 CP/M emulation capabilities of the card. I'll show how it can be used as a ramdisk. For more vintage computer videos, see smbaker.com
