Hi folks (greetings BoredWealth), not sure how well placed I'd be in this forum, I came here after reading some comments about CP/M and thought I'd better broaden those comments (even though they were written some 3 years ago). It doesn't suprise me there are people out there who haven't heard of CP/M - mainly because it was the dominant Operating System for 8bit computers. People who know DOS (PCDOS/MSDOS/DRDOS/FreeDOS) will say that the text based command interface is like CP/M which it is - however CP/M syntax is somewhat different and less user friendly (mostly because CP/M was written in the days when Memory was limited). Having limited memory is a good thing IMO, you have smaller programs and perhaps less to go wrong. Also DOS (version 2.x onwards) has subdirectories (e.g. C:\DOS), in CP/M you have User Areas. Generally the bootable programs are in User 0, and you could have other things happening in User 1,2,3,4 -> upto 15 User areas, some systems could access upto 255 User areas. 15 is quite plentiful if you ask me. Another simularity between DOS and CP/M are ".COM" files. DOS literally inherited these 64k files from CP/M and have the same file layout, the ".COM" files interestingly enough only occured on 8bit versions of CP/M. In 16bit versions (well CP/M-86) they used ".CMD" files which could be larger than your standard ".COM" files. So what did the 16bit version evolve into? Well strangely enough the company (Digital Research) finished up making a product which would be compatable with other DOSes (mainly the popular DOS 3.30) except it was called DRDOS v5.xx (can't recall what the figures were). They also made some slight improvements to what DOS 3.30 had - unfortunately I can't recall what they were. Perhaps the most bizarre thing about DRDOS was the lack of support for earlier CP/M-86 ".CMD" files - the GEM GUI compatable based DOS Plus 1.2 (which was CP/M-86 v4.xx) indeed had support for ".CMD" files. When people think of GUI's for IBMs they think of Windows, however when Windows was in it's infancy, DR developed a GUI interface called "GEM". What happened to GEM? The resblemance of GEM to Apples own GUI was very simular, Apple Sued and Digital Research had to modify GEM hevily (which virtually crippled it), on it's release of DR DOS 6.0 it had a change of name to something like "ViewMax" and was just another Frount-end interface designed to make DOS look friendlier. I can say though that like your Windows 3.x, GEM was indeed a well in advance as a legimate Operating Environment which had it's own program base. Various versions of GEM were made too, in it's simplest form it would work well as a Single tasking GUI on an IBM XT, however Multitasking versions of GEM were made (and are available from Interested Websites on the subject). But I've rambled on too long about this stuff. These days if I'm not working I have interests out in the natural environment to which I communicate though other Environmental Forums Online, the Vintage Computer hobby is something I had for perhaps a longer period of time, though it's something I only do for when I have a bit of time. If I get time I'll play a game or just knock up something in Turbo Pascal 3 for CP/M (I've done stuff on my 8bit Amstrad - usually in emulated mode though) or CP/M-86 v1.1. I used to dream about being some hotshot programmer, though I could never really grasp C/C++ fully and found out I like the Environment (Bush specifically) a lot more and have got lots of rewarding encouragement from the Environment and friends moreso - plus I virtually snapped towards the Environment when I found I could get as much from translating a program (Turbo Pascal 4 onwards) back to CP/M-86 version 3 of TP (sadily Borland never made TP 4 onwards for CP/M-86) and TP 3 was the last to be made for CP/M in general.
wow....the longest introduction i've ever seen Well let me be the first to welcome you here, it's the best place to learn and share ideas that i've found around, enjoy the stay.
Welcome to the forum. I'm an old CP/M, AppleDOS, ProDOS, Primos/Primix, VMS, VM, Esix, Xenix, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, etc... etc... etc... guy myself.
Nice and decriptive Intro ever seen !!! Well Welcome to the FORUM. hope you see you around posting interesting and informative stuff. Thanks
Will.Spencer wrote: I'm an old CP/M, AppleDOS, ProDOS, Primos/Primix, VMS, VM, Esix, Xenix, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD, etc... etc... etc... guy myself. Hmmm, in which order does CP/M come though! :-D For myself CP/M came after Apples OS (not sure which version - it was on a Mac Plus , followed by Mac Classic (that's what I started using Circa 1989) before that I was using Apple IIe - though not the OS, any computer I was using before that was Cassette Based with Locomotive BASIC 1.0 simply providing the commands to load, save & catalogue a tape, though it had the ability of merging or chaining BASIC programs together (which we'd seldomly use) - that was on an Amstrad CPC464, I upgraded to a Disc (yes their called Discs!) Based CPC6128, which supported CP/M Plus as well as CP/M v2.2. CP/M on a machine like that would be a secondary OS - the Primary OS (when you switched the machine on is AMSDOS - unless you took the OS chip out and put an AMSDOS compatable OS which supported 3.5" Disks Drives - why would do you that? Anyone with a CPC Disc Based machine knows that the Built-in Disc Drives were 3" Double Sided Single Density - the Double Sided bit means you physically flip the disc. They generally hold 178k if you use the Data Format, a CP/M based Disc would be a System disk and allows 169k (9k of a system disc is allocated for booting CP/M - either CP/M v2.2 or Plus. When I think about it though, I was using a lot of OSes (particularly GUI based) before CP/M, from Secondary School onwards I was used the Mac OS and even did some Windows 3.1. During that time I got an IBM XT based machine which came with PCDOS 3.3 within a year I had a CPC6128. I didn't really get into CP/M until the late '90s, I had a book which talked about the Family members of CP/M , which is how I knew about CP/M-86. I managed to get a book or two about CP/M and before I knew it I was right into Using it properly. Earlier on I was quite frustrated cause I used to think in terms of DOS syntax, with a lot of persistance I finally managed to make the whole system work - at the same time I got to know my way around with CP/M on an 8bit computer. Sorry I ramble on a bit folks, you all must think I wrote the OSes! ;-) Other OSes and/or Environments I've used have been GEM v1.2 (just before the Apple Lawsuit came into effect), OS/2 Warp v3, I've dabbled in Red Hat Linux (not sure which version) and pretty much the mainstream Windows (and some of the early versions of Windows v2.xx) oh and PCDOS (mostly v3.3 and v5). Cheers, CP/M User.
But after saying all of that, I'm not sure how that comes into play here. This seems to be a forum for the new-age person, I could ramble on about Microsoft all night here, though I'm sure people here don't want that, the only new left in me is anything I've been developing and using with an Environmental message, which includes my Jumpdrive for storage, Digital Camera which I take photos, do some movie making and using things like Microsoft Office in programs like Publisher, Powerpoint and Word for presenting stuff as well as Dabbling in Excel and Access for Data Management. I've also been doing some GIS mapping using Map-Info in the last couple of years (at College) and have aquired a taste for GPS recievers for the task of using them in Weed Management (hoping to purchase one soon). Perhaps the most signifant height for myself in these last couple of years was Obtaining a Diploma level in Natural Resources Management - though it was exciting to bring some old Computing Skills back together in an old Diploma for Technology course which I never successfully completed. Be sweet to get all that done in CP/M! :-D It's something of a consulation though that while the OSes and Programs have been updating - it didn't really take me long to know what's going on - I mean my techonogy course I did back in 1997/8 and we were using Windows 95 and Office 97, the languages I was using were a little bit backward with perhaps the exclusion of VB5 which by the time the course was finished it was VB6 and we were using some DOS based version of Borland C/C++ (C for me was hard, though C++ was a nightmare), we did some RMCOBOL85 because one of our teachers felt that COBOL was gonna take over what JavaScript had started - it was the same teacher which made us do some stuff on CP/M! I must have got top marks in that assignment cause everyone had a hard time finding information about CP/M! :-D
icywolfy wrote: C:\> Hi ...i used to play with MS-Dos and PC-DOS era too. Okay, well I had a lot of fun on a machine where I created two partitions on PCDOS 5. This is on a 386 Based Notebook Computer with a 61Mb Hard Disk. I allocated 40 for DOS and had 21 as a drive with GEM on. When I wanted CP/M-86 v1.1 on the Hard Disk, somewhere along the way I decided to give most of the Hard Disk space to DOS - something like 57Mb and allow 4Mb for CP/M v1.1 cause I didn't know how much Hard Disk Space it would take. So I found a DOS program or two which allowed be to easily reduce the size of the smaller Partition and give the space to the other. From that I believe I set the Partition I wanted CP/M on or could tell which partition space I wanted CP/M on. So now I have a machine with PCDOS 5 on one partition and CP/M-86 v1.1 on the other, it's been a good little machine though I think the Poor Old Hard disk on it's starting to wear out - when I added 4Mb (which I paid a mint for, since it's an old Notebook 386) to it, it's been handy for DOS-based internet Surfing. Afterwards I found out CP/M-86 v1.1 supported upto 8Mb Hard Disk of Space - though I can say that 4Mb it quite plentiful (most of my programs I have on a 1.44Mb Floppy - and believe me it can also hold a bit!) :-D CP/M User.
if u have a new machine running on windows, you could always installed a DosBox emulator, it's helps ur old apps and games run like charm.
icywolfy wrote: if u have a new machine running on windows, you could always installed a DosBox emulator, it's helps ur old apps and games run like charm. Yeah well my machine is a bit funny in that sense. Emulators can never quite do as good as The Real Deal either! :-D I still have my an old Pentium box which has become my DOS games machine (lots of stuff I've got from GameHippo) and I use my 386 for all the CP/M stuff - it's also a good machine for working out what works well and fast on a 386 using a High-level compilable language - not that many people use machines of that caliber nowadays - though it's interesting for noting down what strengths and weaknesses are in TP 3.