Cp/m

[Tobster]

Hi,

I am currently studying computing and IT, which is how I learn about Linux in Robert Cringely Book Accidental Empires - but this was published in 1990 before the day of Ubuntu and how Open Source is today. It was a new thing back in 1990.

Out of interest could someone tell me if CP/M Operating System is stilled used today and is there a Graphical User Interface that uses it?

I am not planing on leaving Ubuntu but interested to improve my knowledge.

Thanks

Toby :KS

[Tobster]

Hi,

I am currently studying computing and IT, which is how I learn about Linux in Robert Cringely Book Accidental Empires - but this was published in 1990 before the day of Ubuntu and how Open Source is today. It was a new thing back in 1990.

Out of interest could someone tell me if CP/M Operating System is stilled used today and is there a Graphical User Interface that uses it?

I am not planing on leaving Ubuntu but interested to improve my knowledge.

Thanks

Toby

[IYY]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

[The Mekon]

CP/M preceded DOS and was mainly used on 8 bit computers. I used to run it on my Excidy Sorcerer Computer back in 1978. I doubt if you could run it on a modern computer.

The following link gives a lot of information:

http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Cpm/

Brian

[RAV TUX]

Hi,

I am currently studying computing and IT, which is how I learn about Linux in Robert Cringely Book Accidental Empires - but this was published in 1990 before the day of Ubuntu and how Open Source is today. It was a new thing back in 1990.

Out of interest could someone tell me if CP/M Operating System is stilled used today and is there a Graphical User Interface that uses it?

I am not planing on leaving Ubuntu but interested to improve my knowledge.

Thanks

Toby :KS
please don't make multiple same post in different forums it just makes for a unnecessary need to merge the threads...

merging this thread with the identical one you started in the "Other OS" forum:http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=363956

[Tobster]

Sorry I was not sure which forum to use

Thanks

Toby

[frenchn00b]

Here I found an emulator for CP/M:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/emulators/cpm-0.2.1.tar.gz

[stream303]

I am not planing on leaving Ubuntu but interested to improve my knowledge.

Consider how lucky we are to be using what was once reserved only for institutions and research facilities, and was very quickly about to become a closed / proprietary system.

Back then, unless you worked in one of those environments, the hardware and licensing costs were astronomical (aside from those at uni's.)

For hobbiest or small business owners, the cost of what the researchers may have considered "toy" hardware that could run CP/M wasn't inconsiderable. If you had the $$ you could actually get something up and running. A normal home user using the hardware and software that the researchers and uni's used was most likely out of the question in the mid-70's to early 80's.

..just my .02c ..

[mips]

Consider how lucky we are to be using what was once reserved only for institutions and research facilities, and was very quickly about to become a closed / proprietary system.

Back then, unless you worked in one of those environments, the hardware and licensing costs were astronomical (aside from those at uni's.)

For hobbiest or small business owners, the cost of what the researchers may have considered "toy" hardware that could run CP/M wasn't inconsiderable. If you had the $$ you could actually get something up and running. A normal home user using the hardware and software that the researchers and uni's used was most likely out of the question in the mid-70's to early 80's.

..just my .02c ..

I had a AppleII clone in 1986 that had a Z80 cpu (besides the 6502) and it could run cp/m, I even had the 5.25" cp/m disks for it. But at the time I did not have the foggiest idea what it was :)

[stream303]

Ah, the Z80 was meant for when you intended to get serious and run things like Wordstar, spreadsheets, basic-80 etc. :)

I still remember the famous wordstar "diamond" commands that you can still get a taste of with the "joe" text editor that comes defaulted to the wordstar command set.

In hindsight, I should have been learning VI, but there wasn't any hardware strong or affordable enough for me to even try it...

[mips]

In hindsight, I should have been learning VI, but there wasn't any hardware strong or affordable enough for me to even try it...

I still lust over CygnusEd from Amiga days...
http://www.apc-tcp.de/support/0030e.php

.

[Bungo Pony]

If you want to really dive into it, get yourself an old computer that ran CP/M. I believe the Osbourne 1 used it, and I'm pretty sure the Commodore 128 has an option for CP/M mode.

[mips]

... and I'm pretty sure the Commodore 128 has an option for CP/M mode.

Thats correct, the CBM128 also had a Z80cpu (besides the 8502) and did cp/m.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_128

Should be able to get one for cheap from a junk shop or online.

[frenchn00b]

I had a AppleII clone in 1986 that had a Z80 cpu (besides the 6502) and it could run cp/m, I even had the 5.25" cp/m disks for it. But at the time I did not have the foggiest idea what it was :)

do you know btw if we can still slot in the 5.25" drives in our brand new towers, in terms of connection

I wanna clone the 5.25" cp/m discs floppy before emulating my old cpm machine ;)

[frenchn00b]

Thats correct, the CBM128 also had a Z80cpu (besides the 8502) and did cp/m.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_128

Should be able to get one for cheap from a junk shop or online.

wwoooohhhhaa
having that box http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Commodore_128_001.jpg some 10-15 years ago, would have been a dream ...

You know alternative to UAE to emulate those http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Commodore_128_001.jpg guy ?

:guitar::guitar:

[lisati]

I have a 5.25" disk that lets me run CP/M on a pair of old Commodore 128 computers that I have collecting dust in the spare room. I never really used it - I was given the Commodore machines by friends and acquaintances, and never bothered getting the software.

It's a command-line based system, no GUI. Apparently some of the ways MS-DOS/PC-DOS goes about its business were inspired by CP/M (sorry, no references to sources available). I think the "CP" stands for "Control Program", and possibly the "M" for Microsoft (but I could be mistaken)

[lisati]

do you know btw if we can still slot in the 5.25" drives in our brand new towers, in terms of connection

I wanna clone the 5.25" cp/m discs floppy before emulating my old cpm machine ;)

I did slot a drive for 5.25" floppies in my now defunct 133MHz machine but after a while they stopped working properly (could have been anything from age or over-use to muck from cigarette smoke) so I pulled them out. I still have them somewhere. Be aware - the disk drives from the '286 based AT style PC can use a larger capacity disk than the original 8086 (or was that 8088?) based PC. You had to set some switch on the AT's "format" command in order for the PC to be able to read the disk.

[Bungo Pony]

I wanna clone the 5.25" cp/m discs floppy before emulating my old cpm machine

Were those for an actual PC? If they were used on a computer that isn't PC compatible, the disks most likely won't work in a PC with a 5.25" drive. You'll need a hack and a floppy drive from the computer that used the floppies to read them. There was no standardization for floppy formats back in the 1980s.

But that's how I got my C-64 floppies onto my PC. I had to use a true Commodore 1541 floppy drive, a custom cable, and a piece of DOS software.

[stream303]

And therein lies the catch-22 of CP/M. It was touted as being the thing to use if you wanted to be "compatible" with others - all you had to do was make sure you were both running CP/M. However, proprietary manufacturer disk formats kind of made that a pain!

Not only did you have to deal with soft / hard sectoring of floppies, but the formats themselves among different manufacturers varied, among other quirks. Talk about lock-in! :)

When studying computer history, I like to compare and contrast what was happening on the home-computer front with what was going on at universities and research facilities.

I gotta' give the BSD guys credit for tying us together with TCP/IP, which really started the ball rolling on the open source front from home computing to minicomputers. Even though early computers were unable to handle *nix from a hardware standpoint, they all wanted tcp/ip. Back in the dialup bbs days, I remember add-on packages that touted tcp/ip to enable bbs system operators to offer access to Usenet newsgroups...

Anyway back on topic somewhat - if you look at the big picture for home-computing, the standardizing of disk formats with DOS is one thing that brought us together as well. No matter what you think of Microsoft or IBM at the time, that was a huge deal. Can you imagine if CP/M was the ruling OS, and manufacturer's stuck to the idea of lock-in disk formats? Would we be running Dell-specific Linux, HP-specific Linux etc today? Kind of far-fetched I know, but who can predict? :)

[frenchn00b]

I still lust over CygnusEd from Amiga days...
http://www.apc-tcp.de/support/0030e.php

.

in clear, ... what#s cygnused ?

[frenchn00b]

And therein lies the catch-22 of CP/M. It was touted as being the thing to use if you wanted to be "compatible" with others - all you had to do was make sure you were both running CP/M. However, proprietary manufacturer disk formats kind of made that a pain!

Not only did you have to deal with soft / hard sectoring of floppies, but the formats themselves among different manufacturers varied, among other quirks. Talk about lock-in! :)

When studying computer history, I like to compare and contrast what was happening on the home-computer front with what was going on at universities and research facilities.

I gotta' give the BSD guys credit for tying us together with TCP/IP, which really started the ball rolling on the open source front from home computing to minicomputers. Even though early computers were unable to handle *nix from a hardware standpoint, they all wanted tcp/ip. Back in the dialup bbs days, I remember add-on packages that touted tcp/ip to enable bbs system operators to offer access to Usenet newsgroups...

Anyway back on topic somewhat - if you look at the big picture for home-computing, the standardizing of disk formats with DOS is one thing that brought us together as well. No matter what you think of Microsoft or IBM at the time, that was a huge deal. Can you imagine if CP/M was the ruling OS, and manufacturer's stuck to the idea of lock-in disk formats? Would we be running Dell-specific Linux, HP-specific Linux etc today? Kind of far-fetched I know, but who can predict? :)


Got we some fonts for a console that sounds/looks like our old CP/M machines? that green fancy fonts :) well, wasnt that bad to write programs on that, isn't it ?

http://content.answers.com/main/content/img/CDE/_WDSTAR.GIF
I recall you that if one put his nose on that green screen, we could count the pixels !!

Well, could we get such effect in Linux, for our consoles ??

[mips]

in clear, ... what#s cygnused ?

A very nice text editor as explained in the link.

[hardyn]

my TI-83 graphing calculator has a Z80 processor... oh how the times have changed.

[saulgoode]

I named my cat "Pip". (If you understand why, you are a true geek.)

[frenchn00b]

What about this one:

mrxvt -bg black -fg green -bt -sr -font -xos4-*-bold-r-normal--17-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*

looks a bit more cpm like ... but a bit

[frenchn00b]

Were those for an actual PC? If they were used on a computer that isn't PC compatible, the disks most likely won't work in a PC with a 5.25" drive. You'll need a hack and a floppy drive from the computer that used the floppies to read them. There was no standardization for floppy formats back in the 1980s.

But that's how I got my C-64 floppies onto my PC. I had to use a true Commodore 1541 floppy drive, a custom cable, and a piece of DOS software.

I am planned to make a mirror of my old cpm machine, well very old machine, 1980, since no one has still that on the internet for sure. Too old stuff.
Would you have the floppy disk to boot the pc you use to dump the floppies (rapidshare or ...mb?)
Could be interesting some...
CP/M wast that bad in the 80-90 ! We loved it!

[frenchn00b]

Compis [Telenova] driver

System not load.

It works with MESS 0.118
sdlmess :

links to the screenshot (http://imageupload.com/~imageupl/show.php/116560_0000.png.html)

from:
http://www.bannister.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=40992&page=all


it diddnt work for me with sdlmess 0122, what to sdlmess XXX ?
who has some cp/m boot disks ?

here is some windows legal:http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/dos.html