5 ms·

But Why... I know the answer and the site gives a good explanation. But still, practically speaking? Who cares about CP/M, perhaps because it's the only useful

But Why... I know the answer and the site gives a good explanation. But still, practically speaking? Who cares about CP/M, perhaps because it's the only useful OS running on 8 bit processors? Does CP/M have something DOS doesn't have? Or is it impossible to run DOS on the Z80?

soneil 7y ago
I think that is a large part of it, yes. There's been a good few kit computers in the last few years - the rc2014 being my favourite (not because it's particularly amazing, but because it's designed to be understandable and digestable), and cp/m is the most approachable (roughly dos-like) OS available for them. (There's also Fuzix, which seems like a monster accomplishment in itself - but I haven't tried it myself. I rather suspect that running a unix-like on an 8bit just ends up feeling like a very slow unix, rather than anything special) (and no, msdos doesn't run on most 8bits. The Intel 8080 was 8bit. The Z80 expanded on that with additional instructions, and cp/m lives in this branch of the family tree. The 8086 gained 16bit instructions, and branches off in an entirely different direction birthing the x86 family tree, which is where you'll find msdos & most variants)
- david-given 7y ago
  Fuzix is amazing. I did a port to the MSP430, a Texas Instruments single-board computer with 66kB of RAM; it feels just like a Unix, despite having no MMU and no multitasking... http://cowlark.com/2015-10-27-fuzix http://cowlark.com/2015-10-27-fuzix I find CP/M interesting because it's provably the minimum viable product for an operating system. It was the personal computer desktop operating system that really worked. It came with full documentation, a full development systems (an assembler and a debugger), and a full set of tooling to allow you to port CP/M to new systems. It was portable, too, and you could run the same program unmodified on nearly any hardware which supported CP/M. So it was this great open-ended system, cheap enough to get into the hands of ordinary people, simple enough that you could understand it all, and yet sophisticated enough that, with enough time, you could achieve _anything_ on it... The CP/M kernel is 3.5kB of 8080 machine code. I think each frame of that video consumed more space than that.
- Zardoz84 7y ago
  note : MS-DOS & clones only work on x86. However CP/M was ported to different CPUs, including 68000 and x86. The CP/M x86 later evolved to DR-DOS.
z3phyr 7y ago
Also, it is in line with the hacker spirit.
pmarin 7y ago
Weird question considering the title of this news forum.

soneil 7y ago

I think that is a large part of it, yes. There's been a good few kit computers in the last few years - the rc2014 being my favourite (not because it's particularly amazing, but because it's designed to be understandable and digestable), and cp/m is the most approachable (roughly dos-like) OS available for them. (There's also Fuzix, which seems like a monster accomplishment in itself - but I haven't tried it myself. I rather suspect that running a unix-like on an 8bit just ends up feeling like a very slow unix, rather than anything special) (and no, msdos doesn't run on most 8bits. The Intel 8080 was 8bit. The Z80 expanded on that with additional instructions, and cp/m lives in this branch of the family tree. The 8086 gained 16bit instructions, and branches off in an entirely different direction birthing the x86 family tree, which is where you'll find msdos & most variants)

david-given 7y ago
Fuzix is amazing. I did a port to the MSP430, a Texas Instruments single-board computer with 66kB of RAM; it feels just like a Unix, despite having no MMU and no multitasking... http://cowlark.com/2015-10-27-fuzix http://cowlark.com/2015-10-27-fuzix I find CP/M interesting because it's provably the minimum viable product for an operating system. It was the personal computer desktop operating system that really worked. It came with full documentation, a full development systems (an assembler and a debugger), and a full set of tooling to allow you to port CP/M to new systems. It was portable, too, and you could run the same program unmodified on nearly any hardware which supported CP/M. So it was this great open-ended system, cheap enough to get into the hands of ordinary people, simple enough that you could understand it all, and yet sophisticated enough that, with enough time, you could achieve _anything_ on it... The CP/M kernel is 3.5kB of 8080 machine code. I think each frame of that video consumed more space than that.
Zardoz84 7y ago
note : MS-DOS & clones only work on x86. However CP/M was ported to different CPUs, including 68000 and x86. The CP/M x86 later evolved to DR-DOS.

z3phyr 7y ago

Also, it is in line with the hacker spirit.

pmarin 7y ago

Weird question considering the title of this news forum.