As an owner of a Starlet, I have a 32k cartridge that lets me use the full 64k for CP/M. That's the only change I see.
I also have the expansion cartridge that lets you connect a monitor and a floppy. I don't have the floppy (yet?), but I do have the monochrome cable and have connected it to a composite monochrome monitor. The major mistake they made is to only allow the memory cartridge OR the expansion cartridge, not both. Of course, if I can every find the floppy drive then I wouldn't need the RAM cartridge to give 64k to CP/M. On Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 12:15 AM Gary Weber <[email protected]> wrote: > The rumor I had heard way, way back in the day was that NEC had originally > intended to release ROMware for those cartridges. Not sure it ever > happened. > > I'd like to believe they'd at least released the technical information on > how those ROM sockets are mapped within memory. We just need to find > technical reference manuals covering the PC-8401A, 8500, and/or 8508A. > (Yeah, I know, I'm laughing out loud as well...) > > > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 8:33 PM John R. Hogerhuis <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> >> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 7:20 PM Chris Fezzler <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Any NEC PC-8500/Starlet owners or folks familiar? >>> To keep it short, in 64K Mode, all the 64K in the computer is assigned >>> to the OS and all the RAM in the cartridge is for storage. Is that correct? >>> >>> >> I've never got it into all-RAM mode. Admittedly though I haven't tried >> that hard. I thought the point of that was to run CP/M, but the only way I >> know you can do that is with the floppy disk attached, that no one has. >> Theoretically you could probably do it with just the ROM/RAM cartridge. If >> someone has docs or files that would help. >> >> I do believe I have the boot disk though. >> >> >>> The NEC PC-8508A ROM/RAM Cartridge...is there a "ROM" socket in there? >>> >>> >> I don't know. I will open it up. >> >> Here are pictures: >> >> https://bitchin100.com/wiki/index.php?title=NEC_8508A_RAM/ROM_Cartridge >> >> -- John. >> >
