Slashdot Mirror

CP/M was wildly popular. Take a look at the DOS Technical Reference Manual and you will see that the DOS system calls are basically identical to the CP/M ones. The only real difference is that DOS uses INT 5 instead of CP/M's CALL 5 to invoke system services. This article describes the striking similarities and why they might exist.

I remember reading this article years ago in Datamation. http://www.retroarchive.org/cp... Long-winded and filled with marvelously specious arguments.

As an example of IBM being open with their BIOS source code see their PC Hardware reference manual:

http://www.retroarchive.org/do...

Open listings like this were *the* documentation on how to use the BIOS API calls.

I don't think 28.8 came around until sometime into the 90s. The fastest you could have gone in the 80s was probably a USR HST modem with the old asymmetric baud. (9600 down/1200 up, IIRC, although it'd switch if you started uploading.) HST didn't hit 14.4k until 1989. V.32 (9600 baud full duplex) didn't get standardized until 1989 also, and V.32bis came later in 1991.

I still remember when Rockwell released their famous "Rockwell chipset" (as all the BBSers I knew called it) and you could get a 14.4k modem cheap! I paid only $272 (after tax) for my blistering fast Zoom modem in 1992. (Later, I sprung another $50 for a 16550 UART so I could downlaod with YMODEM/G and YMODEM/1K more reliably.) Man... I could download 100s of kilobytes of cheesy GIFs and demo programs from BBSes in mere minutes! Much better than the one time I tried to download a 15K GIF at 300 baud... almost got kick-banned for that. With XMODEM and 64 byte blocks that took like 15 minutes. The SysOp didn't appreciate anyone running slower than 1200 baud tying up the line like that with downloads.

This thread is bringing back way too many memories.

Apple has been using the term and suffix .app since it bought NeXT

My 1985 Atari ST with GEM used .app as extension for applications (and .prg for programs. Apparently there was a difference).

"start GEM and run INSTALL.APP"

http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/archive/unofficial/gemworld.html

Which is a good point. THey could lose too. The point I was trying to get across is that copyrighting or trademarking something seemingly already out there or easily derived is not a reason to say they don't have a case. But if the term was already in use for the specific meaning and in the same manner it will be hard sleding.

So while you point out that .app was not original, the rest of the argument I made still is standing for now. "app" used in the context of a store name, may still be accepted. It might not be. It's just not as obvious as people seem to think. Just like Windows, .net, xerox, and yahoo were allowed.

Apple has been using the term and suffix .app since it bought NeXT

My 1985 Atari ST with GEM used .app as extension for applications (and .prg for programs. Apparently there was a difference).

"start GEM and run INSTALL.APP"

http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/archive/unofficial/gemworld.html

http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/os/ has a compupro.zip with a ccpm86 directory with a v2-0 directory with a d3 directory containing the XIOS code I wrote for the Olympia People machine and that contained the code that screen switched the virtual consoles. Does that help? I was surprised when I stumbled across this code with my name in it. I was the first person to write XIOS using rasm and link instead of asm86 and gencmd. the Olympia XIOS was my first commercial effort with Concurrent after I went to work for DRI.

Here is a link: TINY_C.ZIP

And to a book about it: Learning C with tiny c

I learned a lot from this package in 1980, even though I never had an 8080 to run it on. I hand coded it in assembler to run on Interdata machines instead. Still have the loose-leaf in the garage as a prized memento.

The other was a byte-code compiler for a slightly more expansive language. This ran faster, but I never bought it to see.

-dB

Can you still run DOS program from the same era as 4.3BSD on you WinXP box?

GEM3 starts fine under WinXP, thanks.

CPM did not have support for hierarchal directory structure!

That's correct. CP/M did, however, have "user areas" numbered 0..7, which worked in effect like a limited number of directories in a single-level hierarchy. Unfortunately, no user area was visible from any other, except to pip.com (the "peripheral interchange program", sort of a combination of cp and cat). Even then, you could only use pip.com to transfer from another user area to the current one; to get pip.com into a different user area, you had to run pip.com, then use a debugger to save an image of the program.

It wasn't until ZCPR that you could get actual directories under CP/M.

Yee-haw.

Ah, for the days when I leeched software for my Atari 800 at 2400 baud on a Kaypro 4..and then transferring it at 300 baud, waiting hours upon hours to find out if any of the files I downloaded actually did anything.

Or the hours I spent at the virtual command prompts at Drexel Hill North Star,DHN* for short, hoping that there was more gaming goodness available there than LadDer 1, 2, or 3 (download the Java version...it's excellent...like Donkey Kong meets Rogue...vaguely). Remember Aldo's Adventures? Same damn set of games, minus the slick ASCII engine of the originals. Ahhh...

Or the time when I was about 8, when a spin with an ersatz chat with the sysop of some BBS or another offended me (or rather just confused me) for some reason or another (I think it asked me about my mother or some such). The sysops (who must have been at least post-pubescent...they were very amused by the situation) called to make sure nothing was up or to glean further amusement from the situation...anyway, when they asked what I was using to call the board I answered quite honestly, "a terminal for the upstairs computer." One responded, "when I was 8 I couldn't even spell terminal!"

I was so proud.