Running CP/M on a modern machine
Lisa Taylor
computers; I certainly know nothing about CP/M. If I understand his problem
correctly he has an old CP/M program on a floppy and a Wintel P3 maching
running Win98, and he would like to run the former on the latter. I tried to
research this myself, but only found five Yahoo hits on CP/M. I found
something called an Emulator which sounds like it might be helpful, but it
is designed for MACS. I have a small bit of knowledge about software,
hardware, and programming. I hope I've stated the problem in a manner that
is not too terribly irritating to experts.
Well, any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Ross Simpson
"Lisa Taylor" <ltay...@ccsf.org> wrote in message
news:9prfpm$54o$1...@sand.ccsf.cc.ca.us...
Okay, well I hope I can help.
Firsty, I'd need to know which CP/M this program was for. It could be most
likely for an 8Bit system (since they were more popular).
If the program is a generic CP/M program (which would run on most systems)
then a Emulator would help to a point, but if it was too involved you may
need an specific CP/M system itself.
I don't really know if CP/M Emulators emulatate specific systems.
Then there could be the second problem of reading the program, I think some
of the Emulators do read CP/M disks but there so many formats of CP/M disk
that it would be pretty tough to find the right one that way.
If you know which CP/M was used & what the format is on the disk (if this is
the case) then 22disk would be a good way of reading the disk onto a PC disk
for an emulator. I know that 22disk is a DOS program which would probably be
best to run in DOS mode
There are a few CP/M emulators at this page
http://www.cpm.z80.de/emulate.html
Another good search engine for CP/M stuff is
http://www.google.com
Hope this helps.
Ross.
Scott Moore
days are incompatible with modern PCs. I have helped several people
move off older systems, and long ago I moved from a CP/M system myself.
The best way to do it is to link up a serial port between the two machines
and transfer the program over using an XMODEM protocol or similar.
If the original CP/M machine is gone, then life gets tougher, because most
CP/M machines weren't compatible with each other. The CP/M computers were
a litter of different conflicting floppy standards.
If you post exactly what machine you are talking about, someone here might
be able to help you out more (the original CP/M machine the program was for).
--
True knowledge is what you learn after you know everything.
Tilmann Reh
> Your problem is that all, no exceptions, floppy disks from the Cp/M
> days are incompatible with modern PCs. I have helped several people
> move off older systems, and long ago I moved from a CP/M system myself.
>
> The best way to do it is to link up a serial port between the two machines
> and transfer the program over using an XMODEM protocol or similar.
>
> If the original CP/M machine is gone, then life gets tougher, because most
> CP/M machines weren't compatible with each other. The CP/M computers were
> a litter of different conflicting floppy standards.
>
> If you post exactly what machine you are talking about, someone here might
> be able to help you out more (the original CP/M machine the program was for).
Even if you don't know the CP/M disk format, it's not a real
problem. Find someone with a CPU280 and let him analyze the
disk and move its content to a PC disk. No need for a PC or
a serial link.
Tilmann
==================================================================
In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates ?
(Sun Microsystems)
Stephen Mitchell
>
> I'm trying to help someone who seems to know next to nothing about
> computers; I certainly know nothing about CP/M. If I understand his problem
> correctly he has an old CP/M program on a floppy and a Wintel P3 maching
> running Win98, and he would like to run the former on the latter. I tried to
> research this myself, but only found five Yahoo hits on CP/M. I found
> something called an Emulator which sounds like it might be helpful, but it
> is designed for MACS.
<snip>
I am assuming that by "CP/M" you are referring to the 8-bit version.
There are a number of z80 emulators that will run
CP/M 2.2 or CP/M 3.0 on a Pentium-class machine without difficulty.
Two I use are Simeon Cran's MYZ80 and Jurgen Weber's ZSIM
machine. I can send you one of these as an email attachment if
you can't readily find them on the web.
Reading the CP/M program disk is more of a problem. There was no
standard CP/M disk format except for the 8" SSSD format. Software
exists that will allow a PC to read many of the 5 1/4" formats used
by various CP/M machines. I've used a commercial program called
Uniform and a shareware program called 22Disk. But some CP/M
disk formats just can't be read by the floppy controllers on
a PC. These include hard-sector formats (Heath, NorthStar),
single-density (Osborne), and GCR-encoded (Apple II with Softcard).
A company called MicroSolutions once made a floppy-controller
card for the PC that would handle these, but they're very hard
to find. Hopefully, you're friend's disk is one of the more
common soft-sector formats that can be read with a program like
22disk.
Steve Mitchell
Alexandria, VA
ssm...@erols.com