[HN Gopher] How to Start with CP/M
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       How to Start with CP/M
        
       Author : marcodiego
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2022-12-18 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.retrotechnology.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.retrotechnology.com)
        
       | sideshowb wrote:
       | Doesn't answer Why to start with cp/m?
       | 
       | Oh hang on, I know. The locoscript word processor booted in
       | seconds, on 1980s hardware - just like everything else back then,
       | in fact. Who'd have thought load times would go backwards after
       | 40 years of Moore's law?
        
         | art4ur wrote:
         | Vim opens really fast on my desktop. Small and powerful
         | software still exists.
        
         | cstross wrote:
         | Locoscript (the WP that came bundled with Amstrad's PCW series
         | of Z80 small office machines -- probably the best-selling CP/M
         | boxes ever, first sold in 1985) didn't actually run under CP/M.
         | Locoscript could read and write the same filesystem as CP/M
         | 3.0, which you could also boot by flipping the 3" disk over,
         | but it had its own i/o subsystem and ran on the bare metal. (At
         | least the version that Amstrad licensed -- earlier, Locoscript
         | was apparently sold as a horrifically expensive dedicated legal
         | word processing package. The Amstrad version was a cut down
         | cheap'n'cheerful port.)
         | 
         | Also, Locoscript 1.00 really was _anything_ but fast: saving a
         | document over about 20kb to floppy could easily take a minute
         | or two, and if it exceeded the free disk space the WP would
         | crash hard with a corrupted screen buffer ...!
         | 
         | (Source: a PCW8256 was my first real computer, back in the
         | day.)
        
         | Gordonjcp wrote:
         | Jet Set Willy was one of the largest video games of its day and
         | took roughly four and a half minutes to load from tape on the
         | ZX Spectrum. I was telling our teenager about this the other
         | day while she was waiting for GTA5 to load on the PS4. And
         | waiting, and waiting... for about five and a half minutes.
         | 
         | I used to use WordStar on a CP/M machine well into the 1990s
         | because at most its 5.25" disks kept you waiting for two or
         | three seconds.
        
           | stevekemp wrote:
           | I've got a single-board Z80-based system where I still run
           | wordstar and write (trivial) code in Turbo Pascal.
           | 
           | I had a lot of fun working my way through the infocom
           | archive, especially playing the Hitchhikers guide, and
           | writing my own simple four-room adventure game.
           | 
           | CP/M is basically dead, but there are enough retro-fans such
           | as myself that it'll probably still live on for another fifty
           | years.
        
       | themadturk wrote:
       | This is a great page.
       | 
       | After a long time trying on Mac, I found running Microsoft
       | SoftCard CP/M on the Virtual ][ Apple II emulator emulator worked
       | best. The Virtual Kaypro at
       | http://sims.durgadas.com/kaypro/kaypro.html (Java-based) works
       | well also, but keeps you confined to a Kaypro's 9-inch diagonal
       | screen.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-18 23:00 UTC)