My primary accomplishment for this RetroChallenge was making substantial improvements to my standalone floppy disk formatter program for the Quay 900. In the course of trying to find information about the Quay, I created a consolidated advertiser index for the first two volumes of BYTE magazine. In a fit of annoyance over not having a good copy of the Mostek Z80 Micro-Reference Manual, I started putting together a recreation in LaTeX.
Previously my disk formatter was quite kludgey and only did single density. I cleaned it up a lot, added a simple user interface, and double-density support. With only small changes to the console I/O routines it should work under CP/M. The source code is here. It’s released under version 3 of the FSF General Public License.
It’s possible that I might have accomplished more had I been more focused, as I have been on some previous RetroChallenges, including RC2011SC when I ported/rewrote the Apple I monitor to run on the MC6800. However, the main problem wasn’t really the lack of focus but the ongoing demands of my “day job”. Sadly the RetroChallenge doesn’t pay the bills. At least it’s a lot of fun! I’m looking forward to the Winter Warmup, for which I might continue working on the Quay. On the other hand, I have a lot of other project ideas.