Free alternatives to the CP/M standard tools

[David Given]

As part of my ongoing project to put together a provably open source CP/M 2.2 system, I've managed to track down all the pieces *except* the standard CP/M utilities: asm, ddt, ed, pip, submit, dump, load, stat, xsub.

I know that nearly everybody replaced these with better alternatives. Does anyone know of any of these alternatives which have proper licenses or have been released into the public domain? Source code too, preferably, but I can work around that...

Some of the simple tools like submit I'm happy with rewriting myself, but stat's surprisingly complex, and as for asm and ddt... nope, not going there!

(SLR Systems never released the Z80ASM suite source, did they?

[dxf...@gmail.com]

SLR never released anything AFAIK.

DDTZ was likely written from scratch or substantially so. Not sure about
LASM but it existed when DRI was still active with apparently no objections.

Not sure CP/M-80 even has a copyright holder following the break-up of Lineo.

[Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France]

David Given wrote:

> As part of my ongoing project to put together a provably open source CP/M 2.2 system, I've managed to track down all the pieces *except* the standard CP/M utilities: asm, ddt, ed, pip, submit, dump, load, stat, xsub.

Hahem! We (Bill Beech, Hector Peraza, Jeffrey Shook, Larry Kraemer, Mark Ogden, Udo Munk, William Collis and me, together as the "CP/M 1.3 Party"), recreated, in 2014 (! in case you do not read the comp.os.cpm Newsgroup), the source code of CP/M and *ALL* of its utilities... Reference:

https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/early-digital-research-cpm-source-code/

> I know that nearly everybody replaced these with better alternatives.

??? Obviously, you are a "Newbie".

To begin with, you mention ASM and DDT. But Digital Research used MAC and SID! (In case you are a fan of the Z-80 CPU, Microsoft never had a Z-80 debugger: its official M80 manual says to use Digital Research's ZSID!)

Second, internally, Digital Research used MP/M-II, not CP/M 2.2, and their computers were linked by a network: CP/NET! Are you still thinking (in 2019) that CP/M was limited to 8-inch 243KB floppy disks and 16KB TPA?

> Does anyone know of any of these alternatives which have proper licenses or have been released into the public domain? Source code too, preferably, but I can work around that...

You, a Newbie, can do that? Then, please, show us what you can do... (I will not hold my breath!)

> Some of the simple tools like submit I'm happy with rewriting myself, but stat's surprisingly complex, and as for asm and ddt... nope, not going there!

If you are not even able to recreate something as simple as tools for the Intel 8080 CPU, then are you sure that you are a programmer?

> (SLR Systems never released the Z80ASM suite source, did they?

No. Z80ASM started as a disassembly of Microsoft's M80, rewritten to be a single-pass assembler, rather than the traditional two-passes one.

I was forgetting: you do not seem to know of the "classic" CP/M tools TEX (which led to the "dot commands" of WordStar... and was used by Digital Research to produce all of its manuals) and DESPOOL (background printing, incorporated in WordStar 4). With such a magnitude of ignorance, I wonder if you have ever used CP/M ?

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

[David Given]

On Thursday, 17 January 2019 11:09:17 UTC+1, Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France wrote:
[...]

> Hahem! We (Bill Beech, Hector Peraza, Jeffrey Shook, Larry Kraemer, Mark Ogden, Udo Munk, William Collis and me, together as the "CP/M 1.3 Party"), recreated, in 2014 (! in case you do not read the comp.os.cpm Newsgroup), the source code of CP/M and *ALL* of its utilities... Reference:
>
> https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/early-digital-research-cpm-source-code/

Sadly, I can't use that --- the source code has distribution restrictions.

[...]

> If you are not even able to recreate something as simple as tools for the Intel 8080 CPU, then are you sure that you are a programmer?

That's uncalled for. Please don't be insulting.

[dxf...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 9:20:58 PM UTC+11, David Given wrote:
> On Thursday, 17 January 2019 11:09:17 UTC+1, Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France wrote:
> [...]
> > Hahem! We (Bill Beech, Hector Peraza, Jeffrey Shook, Larry Kraemer, Mark Ogden, Udo Munk, William Collis and me, together as the "CP/M 1.3 Party"), recreated, in 2014 (! in case you do not read the comp.os.cpm Newsgroup), the source code of CP/M and *ALL* of its utilities... Reference:
> >
> > https://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/early-digital-research-cpm-source-code/
>
> Sadly, I can't use that --- the source code has distribution restrictions.

Had a quick look and the only restriction I could see was:
"This material is provided for non-commercial use only."

[Steve Nickolas]

That can be a pretty big restriction. (For one, it makes it
non-Open®™©.)

CP/M proper has a license that requires code to go through a clearinghouse
- that can be a breaker issue too.

-uso.

[David Given]

On Friday, 18 January 2019 06:00:10 UTC+1, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Jan 2019, dxf...@gmail.com wrote:
> > Had a quick look and the only restriction I could see was:
> > "This material is provided for non-commercial use only."
>
> That can be a pretty big restriction. (For one, it makes it
> non-Open®™©.)

Yup, that's the problem. One of my goals is to produce a kit for a CP/M-ish operating system which can be legally distributed with emulators; including this software would mean that such software couldn't be included in, for example, Debian or Ubuntu distribution disks (because those disks are sold for money).

(Specifically for Debian, this restriction is explicitly called out by rule #6 of the Debian Free Software Guidelines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines.)

(I say CP/M-ish because what I've currently got is using ZSDOS and ZCPR1, both freely distributable, so it's not actually CP/M at all!)

[Floppy Software]

Look at my github repositories, you will find ZSM aka Z80ASMUK. It's a good Z80 assembler, public domain, still updating it.

[Floppy Software]

Ups! My github repository address for retro projects is:

https://github.com/MiguelVis/RetroProjects

[David Given]

On Saturday, 19 January 2019 12:07:30 UTC+1, Floppy Software wrote:
> Ups! My github repository address for retro projects is:
>
> https://github.com/MiguelVis/RetroProjects

That looks just like the sort of thing I'm looking for --- zsm34 builds very nearly out of the box with zmac, too (just need to comment out the LIST NOCOND line). Thank you very much!

Unfortunately I'm not sure I can use it. From the source code:

; "ZSM 2.9 T" is an improvement over "ZSM 2.8"
;
; It is copyright (c) Ian Watters 1988
[...]
; No charge whatsoever may be made for any distribution
; (including being 'given away' with anything for which
; any charge is made) of the files ZSM29.* (or any disk
; or other media containing them) without my express,
; written permission!
;
; Currently, only The CP/M & MS-DOS Users' Group (UK)
; has such permission.
;
; I encourage anyone to distribute them if, and only if,
; this is completely without any charge to the recipient.

So unless Ian Watters later relicensed it or released it into the public domain then it has to be considered to be encumbered. I can't find anything on the net. In fact the last reference to Ian Watters I've seen was 1999 via a Compulink address, and I suspect they're no longer contactable...

[Floppy Software]

No problem at all. Just use v2.8, I have used it for years. It's in the repository too.

[Floppy Software]

There is also ZINC from John Elliott, free look alike tools for CP/M 3:

https://www.seasip.info/Cpm/Zinc/index.html

[david...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, 19 January 2019 22:29:09 UTC+1, Floppy Software wrote:
> No problem at all. Just use v2.8, I have used it for years. It's in the repository too.

Very belatedly (I've taken time off to do other things)... ZSM 2.8 is marked as (C) 1977 Lehman Consulting, and there's no other mention of licensing, so I have to assume that All Rights Reserved applies without further information. Apparently it was published in a couple of public domain libraries, the US User Group, Vol 16, and later in the CP/M Users Group (UK). Don't suppose any of these made it online? There might be a public domain declaration there (or at least, enough of an excuse of one to get away with).

The Berne Convention act was March 1, 1988; prior to then, anything published without a copyright notice automatically entered the public domain (at least in the US). So if there had been no copyright statement I'd have been fine...

[Nathanael]

On Sunday, May 5, 2019 at 6:12:43 PM UTC+8, david...@gmail.com wrote:
> User Group, Vol 16, and later in the CP/M Users Group (UK).
> Don't suppose any of these made it online?

Dunno if this is what you're looking for:

http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/ftp.php?b=cpm/Software/CPM_DOSGG/

[David Given]

On Thursday, 17 January 2019 00:53:57 UTC+1, David Given wrote:
> As part of my ongoing project to put together a provably open source CP/M 2.2 system, I've managed to track down all the pieces *except* the standard CP/M utilities: asm, ddt, ed, pip, submit, dump, load, stat, xsub.

Interested parties may be interested to know that I've rewritten asm.com, live on video:

http://cowlark.com/2019-06-01-cpm-asm

While it's not *complete*, it is *functional*, and I successfully assembled the original DR CCP with it. It's in C and is compiled with sdcc, so it's a Z80 executable for now, but I have an 8080 compiler lined up which I need to make work.