CP/M-86 vs. concurrent CP/M vs Concurrent Dos
timo...@cyberramp.net
OK! Color me confused. I THINK I know that CP/M-86 was "pure" CP/M"
for the PC/XT. It had its' own file system, and was NOT MS-DOS
compatible in any way.
Now enter Concurrent CP/M-86, and COncurrent DOS. Are these realy the
same animal, just with multiple names? Or, are they seperate, distinct
Porducts? If the latter, what were the differences? I know that
Concurrent DOS will run either CP/M-86, or MS-DOS, programs. What
about Concurrent CP/M-86? Is that just a multi-tasking version of
CP/M-86? If so, how does irt compare to MP/M-86?
I need serious answers to these questions as they may affect how much
of this software I may eventualy be able to post to the CP/M web page.
Thanks,
Tim Olmstead
webmaster of the CP/M Unofficial web page
http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
Jim Lopushinsky
timo...@cyberramp.net wrote:
Tim:
Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS, MP/M-86, Concurrent PCDOS are basically
the same product. DRI changed the name of the os with each new
version. Versions before 3 (prior to 1981 or 82) were MP/M-86. Version
3.x was Concurrent CP/M (CCPM). Version 4 and later were named
Concurrent DOS (CDOS) and Concurrent PCDOS. Version 3.2 supported MSDOS
version 1.x media and software as well as CP/M. Version 4.x supported
MSDOS 2.x file system with paths and handle calls. Version 5 supported
MSDOS 3.x stuff. Direct CP/M media support was dropped with version 5
(1986) and Concurrent DOS 386 version 1.0 was introduced in 1987 with
basically the same features as CDOS 5 and supported virtual 8086 mode.
BTW the CONDOS.ZIP file on your web site is actually a CDOS 386 beta 1
version. All these versions are true multitasking priority dispatched
OSs with queues and flags for inter-process communication and virtual
consoles. You could switch to another DOS prompt with CTRL-<num-pad
number>. Needless to say, all CDOS versions support CP/M-86 .CMD files
and int 224 CP/M BDOS calls, even on MSDOS media, as well as MSDOS .EXE,
.COM and .BAT files.
If you want to run CP/M-86 sofware, Concurrent Controls has a demo
version of Multiuser MDOS 7 GOLD available from their web site:
ftp.conctrls.com/pub/ take GOLDEMO1.EXE , GOLDEMO2.EXE and
GOLDEMO.TXT. This is a complete version that supports CP/M-86 .CMD
files and looks and feels identical to DRI's CDOS. The only restriction
is that it will shut down after 1 hour after each boot, but can be
rebooted any number of times.
Jim Lopushinsky
Razzpy
Concurrent CP/M is a modified form of concurrent DOS. Compupro/Vaisyn
bought rights to the software and modified it to work woihin the S-100
systems they were selling. It would support CP/M and MSDOS programs. It
provided a reasonable compatibility with MSDOS 2.x and some really well
behaved programs written for MSDOS 3.x. I am running Compupro's version
5.02 at this time and have one logical drive set up to MSDOS file structure
- the rest are set up for CP/M.
Later versions (CPMX 3.0 For 386 based systems) were even more compatible
especially when coupled with the video card with its own on board memory.
Concurrent CP/M is really (therefore) a modification from the Digital
Research Concurrent DOS package. In fact I use the Concurrent DOS tool kit
to create modifications to my Concurrent CP/M setup.
Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Rich Raspenti
Richard Plinston
In message <<19970906234...@ladder01.news.aol.com>> raz...@aol.com writes:
>
> Concurrent CP/M is really (therefore) a modification from the Digital
> Research Concurrent DOS package. In fact I use the Concurrent DOS tool kit
> to create modifications to my Concurrent CP/M setup.
Ummm, no. It was the other way round. Versions 1.0, 2.0 and
3.1 were called Concurrent-CP/M-86, versions 3.2 and 4.1 were
called Concurrent-DOS, versions 5.1 and 6.x were called
Concurrent-DOS-XM. Contempory with 6.x were versions called
CDOS-386 issues 1-3. Issue 4 was called DR-Multiuser-DOS 5.0
followed by DR-MDOS 5.1 and 5.11.
IBM-PC specific versions of CDOS were known as Concurrent-PC-DOS
up to version 5.1, the 6.x and -386 were only ever IBM-PC
specific.
Razzpy
When used on a PC the version installed was CDOS-XM 3.x (cannot remember
the second number) CPM went to 6.2 then the 386 version was issued on the
PC as CDOS XM - 3.0. After that I lost touch with the development on the PC.
THe last version for Compupro (80286 and later ) was verion 6.2. I had to
go with 5.2 because I had only a Disk 1A and an 8086 master. A disk 1B was
recommended for the 6.2 revision. CPM-XM was available for the Compupro
system, but the upgrade would have been more than I could afford. There
Compupro went to a regulated powersupply setup instead of the unregulated.
I had no desire to remove my voltage regulators and purchase several new
boards to support the upgrade version. While it would have been nice the
cost was not worth the difference.
Thanks,
Rich Raspenti
Roger Ivie
In article <341FFB...@sungardams.com>, David Director <ddir...@sungardams.com>
writes:
> More DOS-like utilities were included, including
> a BACKUP/RESTORE capability, which was not, unfortunately, compatible
> with regular DOS versions.
Yeah, right. Like any of the DOS versions were compatible with themselves.
To do a restore from a DOS BACKUP, you not only had to have the exact same
version of RESTORE that corresponded to the BACKUP you used, you _also_ had
to have a bootable disk of the appropriate DOS version because it would
refuse to run under anything else.
I suppose one could argue that by not being compatible with DOS BACKUP, it
was just being compatible with DOS BACKUP.
(sorry for the wasted bandwidth, but DOS BACKUP is one program that just
pissed me off every time I tried to use it)
--
-------------------------+------------------------------------------------
Roger Ivie | "There's nothing philosophical about morality!"
iv...@cc.usu.edu | - Rush Limbaugh
http://cc.usu.edu/~ivie/ | August 20, 1997
David Director
timo...@cyberramp.net wrote:
>
> OK! Color me confused. I THINK I know that CP/M-86 was "pure" CP/M"
> for the PC/XT. It had its' own file system, and was NOT MS-DOS
> compatible in any way.
>
> Now enter Concurrent CP/M-86, and COncurrent DOS. Are these realy the
> same animal, just with multiple names? Or, are they seperate, distinct
> Porducts? If the latter, what were the differences? I know that
> Concurrent DOS will run either CP/M-86, or MS-DOS, programs. What
> about Concurrent CP/M-86? Is that just a multi-tasking version of
> CP/M-86? If so, how does irt compare to MP/M-86?
>
OK, here's the scoop. Concurrent CP/M-86 was the immediate successor
to MP/M-86, and came out around 1984. It had a native CP/M file system,
regular CP/M utilities, but could read DOS filesystems and had several
DOS-like commands for working with DOS files. It was basically DRI's
first attempt to deal with the DOS/CPM dichotomy.
CCPM-86 was followed by Concurrent DOS (I'll leave off the -86 from
here on in) in 1985, IIRC. It reversed the previous situation, making
the DOS file system native, with the CP/M file system mountable via
a separate CPM command. More DOS-like utilities were included, including
a BACKUP/RESTORE capability, which was not, unfortunately, compatible
with regular DOS versions. Many of the old CP/M-type utilities were
also included. I believe this early CDOS came out as version 2.0.
Another version, Concurrent-DOS XM (for eXtended Memory), followed
shortly thereafter, as version 5.0 (I don't know why the jump).
It added support for memory above 1 MB, using the AST EEMS
specification (different from the LIM spec, though the two were later
merged in LIM 4.0). Using memory boards from AST and others, memory
up to 16 MB could be mapped, with a TPA "window" of 400K or so.
This was shortly followed by versions 5.2, 6.0, and 6.2, each of which
improved the extended memory support and DOS compatibility to some
degree and reduced the memory footprint of the OS.
In 1986 or 1987, CDOS-386 version 3.0 was released, replacing CDOS-XM.
As its name implies, CDOS-386 required a 386 or better to run, while
XM could be run even on a plain vanilla XT (and, yes, you could actually
preemptively multitask on an XT, even though Microsoft swore it was
impossible). CDOS 3.0 vastly improved the DOS compatibility as well
as the efficiency of the file system, easily surpassing the performance
of DOS itself even when multitasking. Almost all well-behaved DOS
programs would run under CDOS 3.0, which also supported many installable
device drivers and TSRs. To illustrate the level of compatibility, you
could run Norton Utilities and actually modify the disk while multi-
tasking, though it could be pretty dangerous to do so.
Around 1989, if memory serves, Multiuser DOS version 5.0 came out; I
believe this was the last product introduced under the DRI name. This
was more a refinement of the CDOS product than a new product, as by then
the DOS compatibility was quite good and the system was extremely stable.
When Novell bought DRI, they released a minor upgrade, Multiuser DOS 5.1.
In addition to running DOS programs in single-user mode (or multiple,
independent instances of them, such as word processing), MDOS 5.x also
supported networking standards, implementing DOS-compatible file and
record locking and NETBIOS compatibility. Thus, you could run many
standard network-type databases such as Paradox and FoxPro in a
true multiuser environment. MDOS 5.x also introduced network connec-
tivity, in the form of a Novell IPX/SPX protocol stack and NETX
redirector, giving all users on the MDOS system access to a Netware\
host.
After that, Novell abandoned the MDOS line. In 1993 or so, it was
licensed to three OEMs, who continued their individual product directions
based on the MDOS core. These were Concurrent Controls, in California,
which had long had their own flavor of CDOS; Intelligent Micro Systems
(IMS) in Great Britain, which had done a great deal of development on
CDOS during the 1980s in association with DRI; and a third company
in Australia whose name I can't at the moment recall. All three are
still offering descendants of CDOS. Most or all of these can run
Windows 3.x (I don't think anyone has yet gotten a handle on Win 95)
within a terminal session on asppropriate hardware.
While all versions from CDOS 3.0 on up pretty much use standard DOS
commands (although substantially improved over MS versions), full
backward compatibility with CP/M-86 .CMD files and APIs has been
maintained. Any program written for CP/M-86 should be able to run
without restriction.
You could probably get more information from either Concurrent Controls
or from IMS' US representative, Logan Industries (http://www.lii.com).
I've used the IMS product (REAL/32) extensively, and can tell you that
it's a great system; I know that Concurrent also puts out a fine product,
though my experience with it is limited.
I hope this helps. I may have some old manuals still hanging around,
if you're interested.
-- David
Razzpy
One addition. DRI licensed Compupro who produced an S-100 version which
made the CPM file structure native, though the MSDOS structures were still
supported. Currently I set aside 10mb for MSDOS programs, leaving the rest
forCPM. Logical drive D is my MSDOS drive.
Thanks,
Rich Raspenti
Don Maslin
Razzpy (raz...@aol.com) wrote:
: One addition. DRI licensed Compupro who produced an S-100 version which
:
: Thanks,
: Rich Raspenti
:
And NEC had a variant for their APC (Advanced Personal Computer) - the
one with the builtin 8" drives.
- don
do...@cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
timo...@cyberramp.net
>(sorry for the wasted bandwidth, but DOS BACKUP is one program that just
>pissed me off every time I tried to use it)
DOS BACKUP has one significant thing in common with CP/M 2.2's ED.COM.
THe best thing yu can do with it is to delete it, and recover the disk
space.
Richard Steven Walz
In article <xCKl0m...@cc.usu.edu>, Roger Ivie <iv...@cc.usu.edu> wrote:
>In article <341FFB...@sungardams.com>, David Director <ddir...@sungardams.com>
>writes:
>> a BACKUP/RESTORE capability, which was not, unfortunately, compatible
>> with regular DOS versions.
>
>To do a restore from a DOS BACKUP, you not only had to have the exact same
>version of RESTORE that corresponded to the BACKUP you used, you _also_ had
>to have a bootable disk of the appropriate DOS version because it would
>refuse to run under anything else.
>
>I suppose one could argue that by not being compatible with DOS BACKUP, it
>was just being compatible with DOS BACKUP.
>
>pissed me off every time I tried to use it)
>-------------------------+------------------------------------------------
>Roger Ivie | "There's nothing philosophical about morality!"
>iv...@cc.usu.edu | - Rush Limbaugh
>http://cc.usu.edu/~ivie/ | August 20, 1997
Gee, Rog', maybe you were slow! It pissed me off the FIRST time and I never
used it again!! ;-)
-Steve
--
-Steve Walz rst...@armory.com ftp://ftp.armory.com:/pub/user/rstevew
-Electronics Site!! 1000 Files/50 Dirs!! http://www.armory.com/~rstevew
Europe:(Italy) ftp://ftp.cised.unina.it:/pub/electronics/ftp.armory.com
Richard Plinston
In message <<341FFB...@sungardams.com>> David Director <ddir...@sungardams.com> writes:
>
> OK, here's the scoop. Concurrent CP/M-86 was the immediate successor
> to MP/M-86, and came out around 1984. It had a native CP/M file system,
> regular CP/M utilities, but could read DOS filesystems and had several
> DOS-like commands for working with DOS files. It was basically DRI's
> first attempt to deal with the DOS/CPM dichotomy.
CCP/M-86 actually was released in Sept 1982. Version 3.1 was the
first that offered DOS 1.x (no sub-directory) support. 3.2 had
the first DOS-like utilities. These two versions were, as you
say, from 1984.
>
> CCPM-86 was followed by Concurrent DOS (I'll leave off the -86 from
> here on in) in 1985, IIRC. It reversed the previous situation, making
> the DOS file system native, with the CP/M file system mountable via
> a separate CPM command. More DOS-like utilities were included, including
This was implementor specific. I have versions of CDOS 3.1, 4.1 and
5.1 (XM) that only support CP/M media on hard disk, and another
range of the same versions that must boot from CP/M media but also
support DOS media drives - but without file sharing or record
locking, that required shared data to be on CP/M partitions. These
were interesting machines because the drive could also support
Unix partitions which could be simultaneous accessed by another
processor on the SCSI bus. Cross connecting the screens by
pass thru allowed DOS, CP/M-86 and Unix programs to be available
at the flick of a virtual screen.
> a BACKUP/RESTORE capability, which was not, unfortunately, compatible
> with regular DOS versions. Many of the old CP/M-type utilities were
> also included. I believe this early CDOS came out as version 2.0.
While the first CDOS was 3.2, this was rare because 4.0 quickly
followed.
>
> Another version, Concurrent-DOS XM (for eXtended Memory), followed
> shortly thereafter, as version 5.0 (I don't know why the jump).
There wasn't a jump.
> It added support for memory above 1 MB, using the AST EEMS
> specification (different from the LIM spec, though the two were later
> merged in LIM 4.0). Using memory boards from AST and others, memory
> up to 16 MB could be mapped, with a TPA "window" of 400K or so.
> This was shortly followed by versions 5.2, 6.0, and 6.2, each of which
> improved the extended memory support and DOS compatibility to some
Version 6.x was the first to be IBM-PC XT or AT only. Up to these
they were implementable on non-IBM hardware and the machines that
I have are decidedly non-IBM. A TPA area of 800Kb for example.
On an XM machine I can run several 800Kb programs, but that would
pointless. The whole point of multitasking is that you don't
need all-in-one huge programs.
> degree and reduced the memory footprint of the OS.
>
> In 1986 or 1987, CDOS-386 version 3.0 was released, replacing CDOS-XM.
It didn't actually replace it. Versions 6.0 and 386 issue 1 were
parrallel releases, followed by 6.1/issue 2 and 6.2/isuue 3.
> As its name implies, CDOS-386 required a 386 or better to run, while
> XM could be run even on a plain vanilla XT (and, yes, you could actually
> preemptively multitask on an XT, even though Microsoft swore it was
> impossible). CDOS 3.0 vastly improved the DOS compatibility as well
Microsoft did actually write a multitasking version of MS-DOS. It
was released as 4.0 and 4.1 (not to be confused with the later
4.01). These were based on 3.1 and 3.2 and introduced some
form of background procesing and 'popups' (see 'European DOS' in
Brown and Ktle's book 'PC Interrupts). Seeing this you would
believe that multitasking was impossible, but only because
of the way it was done.
> as the efficiency of the file system, easily surpassing the performance
> of DOS itself even when multitasking. Almost all well-behaved DOS
> programs would run under CDOS 3.0, which also supported many installable
> device drivers and TSRs. To illustrate the level of compatibility, you
> could run Norton Utilities and actually modify the disk while multi-
> tasking, though it could be pretty dangerous to do so.
I wouldn't let norton anywhere near my CDOS sites.
The major advance of CDOS-386 was the direct screen write virtualising.
On early versions if you started a direct screen write program
from a terminal the image appeared on the main screen. Very
disconcerting. (IBM machines only).
>
> Around 1989, if memory serves, Multiuser DOS version 5.0 came out; I
> believe this was the last product introduced under the DRI name. This
> was more a refinement of the CDOS product than a new product, as by then
> the DOS compatibility was quite good and the system was extremely stable.
> When Novell bought DRI, they released a minor upgrade, Multiuser DOS 5.1.
> In addition to running DOS programs in single-user mode (or multiple,
> independent instances of them, such as word processing), MDOS 5.x also
> supported networking standards, implementing DOS-compatible file and
> record locking and NETBIOS compatibility. Thus, you could run many
> standard network-type databases such as Paradox and FoxPro in a
> true multiuser environment. MDOS 5.x also introduced network connec-
> tivity, in the form of a Novell IPX/SPX protocol stack and NETX
> redirector, giving all users on the MDOS system access to a Netware\
> host.
DRI had implemented Netware connection in DR-MDOS long before been
bought, but it was constrained by Novell's licence to only allow
1 connection at a time. After Novell aquired DRI it put out
5.11 which allowed multiple connections so that several users
could access the Netware drive. Today DR-MDOS is still sold
as a remote access server for Netware systems.
Of course CDOS had always supported networking in the form of
DR-Net (and still does so). MP/M was originally planned as
being a file server system for CP/NET using CP/M as the clients.
DR-NET was the 16 bit improved version of this. I have used
DR-NET to connect CCP/M 3.1 systems together (and 4.1 and 5.1)
and the OzTerm and WinTerm products are still based on DR-NET.
Being a peer system it allows CDOS/DR-MDOS/Real:32 systems to
be connected together to share files, printers and processors.
The sort of thing that the industry is trying to put together
10 years after DRI had it available.
>
> After that, Novell abandoned the MDOS line. In 1993 or so, it was
> licensed to three OEMs, who continued their individual product directions
> based on the MDOS core. These were Concurrent Controls, in California,
> which had long had their own flavor of CDOS; Intelligent Micro Systems
> (IMS) in Great Britain, which had done a great deal of development on
> CDOS during the 1980s in association with DRI; and a third company
> in Australia whose name I can't at the moment recall. All three are
DataPac. They have just been purchased by Citrix.
But these were appointed by DRI much earlier and only reappointed
by Novell. DataPac had its own versions of CDOS 6.x and -386
since around 1989.
David Director
Richard Plinston wrote:
>
> [snipped for brevity]
>
Thanks for the corrections. My comments were all from my all-too-fuzzy
memory; I appreciate the details. I didn't want to get into the issue
of DR/NET, as the post was already getting to be unwieldy, but you are
certainly correct in that area.
BTW, re the Norton Utilities: I never installed them for *users* to
get to; that would have indeed been dangerous. But I am one of the
few people around crazy enough to manually rebuild a trashed FAT, so I
always carried a copy (still do, in fact) in my briefcase. My point
was not that it *should* be run under CDOS, only that CDOS was robust
enough to handle it (with no other users on the system -- I shudder
to think what could happen otherwise). But when you need to get down
to that level, there really isn't anything else that I know of that
will let you do it.
Thanks again for the further details.
-- David
gdk2...@gmail.com
> OK! Color me confused. I THINK I know that CP/M-86 was "pure" CP/M"
> for the PC/XT. It had its' own file system, and was NOT MS-DOS
> compatible in any way.
>
> Now enter Concurrent CP/M-86, and COncurrent DOS. Are these realy the
> same animal, just with multiple names? Or, are they seperate, distinct
> Porducts? If the latter, what were the differences? I know that
> Concurrent DOS will run either CP/M-86, or MS-DOS, programs. What
> about Concurrent CP/M-86? Is that just a multi-tasking version of
> CP/M-86? If so, how does irt compare to MP/M-86?
>
> of this software I may eventualy be able to post to the CP/M web page.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>