Don't tell my Epson PX-8, CPM in rom. Theres not much to romming cpm. Allison

For the first time, I saw reference on an ebay auction to the First West Coast Computer Faire. The proceedings is on auction at: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=156621934 I am just curious how many people here have programs and proceedings from that event in their collections. I have a collection of programs and proceedings starting with the first program and IIRC, most of the proceedings for the first seven or eight years. And no, they aren't for sale or auction (no duplicates.) It will be interesting to see what this will close at!

Really simple... Command.com (even V1) is bigger that CPM complete, CCP, BDOS and BIOS are typically around 6.5-8k on most cpm systems. to be fair most CPM systems do not do a POST so that is a consideration too. FYI: MS-basic for CPM is roughly 30k, the compiler is smaller. So far I've show the code as smaller I may add in 1982 the typical z80 was 4 mhz and there were 6mhz parts around where the average XT was 4.77mhz and the cpus use about the same number of cycles to do similar things so the z80 was nearly as fast and ran a lot less code to do it all typically faster. By 1985 286s were 8-10mhz and z80s to 8mhz (or z180s to 10mhz) were still beating them in text based apps... reason codebloat. It's hard to beat compact efficient code on a good cpu. An aside apple][s were quite able to beat XT PCs, someteimes with better graphics. Reason, tight code. Allison

Could it be perhaps because the Redmond Terror has nothing to do with it? Actually, I think it relates to hardware design. On Thu, 2 Sep 1999, Phil Clayton wrote: M. K. Peirce Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc. 215 Shady Lea Road, North Kingstown, RI 02852 "Casta est qui nemo rogavit." - Ovid

Most yes but not all. My Visual 1050 does a powerup test then tests to see what the boot device (floppy or winni) is useable. Still faster! As to device loadability and images on disk. CPM generally is loaded as an image on disk for versions up to CPM3. CPM3, MPM and CPM86 (68k too) All load a loader that is core file system and that loaded loads a file called CPM.sys though in some causes it will load peices and link them. The most accurate statement about cpm (commonly 2.2) is that it prohibited nothing. Loadable devices can and was done, though most BIOSs were pretty bare. So if you wanted loadable devices and what not it was quite doable and the ZCPR system was one such example. Even TSR programs were done such as Handyman for example. More correctly it is a complete file system. The CPP was at 2k barely more than a file loader. There was nothing to prevent you from replacing CCP with your own (ZCCP, ZCPR, CCP+ examples). If I could make one comment rre were the system before about 82'sih that had a bios that used interrupts. Example like the Vt180 or later years AMproLB began to show what the CPM was capable of. This is true for both. The CPM image is 8080 code and if optimized for z80 it's both smaller and faster. Running CPM (P2dos a z80 clone) on a 10mhz z80 with 128k of ram via paged MMU and fast DMA floppy and hard disks is a shockingly fast machine in actual use. I know my s100 crate is exactly this. The CPM version is stil 2.2 via the clone but all of the mods like ZCPR, loadable devices, TSRs, RSXs are in there and quite pleasent to use. I also have background print spooling, background loadable programs (simple timeshare) implmented. it was quite easy to do in that CPM does not prohibit it (it just doesn't do it) Allison