[HN Gopher] How to Start with CP/M ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-18 23:00 UTC)