127-576: CP/M-86 is a discontinued version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088 . The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format . Digital Research also produced a multi-user multitasking operating system compatible with CP/M-86, MP/M-86 , which later evolved into Concurrent CP/M-86 . When an emulator
254-701: A Cromemco Z-2 with iCom 8-inch soft-sectored floppy disk drives"; he also owned a TRS-80 Model I , and the first subject discussed in the column was an add-on that permitted it to use the same data and CP/M applications as the Cromemco. The next column appeared in December 1980 with the subtitle "BASIC, Computer Languages, and Computer Adventures"; Ezekiel II, a Compupro S-100 CP/M system, debuted in March 1983. Other computers received nicknames, such as Zorro , Pournelle's "colorful" Zenith Z-100 , and Lucy Van Pelt ,
381-459: A Ph.D. in political science in March 1964. His master's thesis is titled "Behavioural observations of the effects of personality needs and leadership in small discussion groups", and is dated 1957. Pournelle's Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political 'isms'". Pournelle married Roberta Jane Isdell in 1959;
508-453: A "fussbudget" IBM PC ; he referred to generic PC compatibles as "PClones". Pournelle often denounced companies that announced vaporware , sarcastically writing that they would arrive " Real Soon Now " (later abbreviated to just "RSN"), and those that used software copy protection . As part of a redesign in June 1984, the magazine renamed the popular column to "Computing at Chaos Manor", and
635-582: A 1997 article, Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written the SDI portion of Ronald Reagan 's State of the Union Address , as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration using the larger defense budget. Pournelle wrote in response that while the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy "wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for
762-470: A CP/M-like operating system that Microsoft bought from Seattle Computer Products renaming it MS-DOS . Microsoft adapted it for the PC and licensed it to IBM. It was sold by IBM under the name of PC DOS . After learning about the deal, Digital Research founder Gary Kildall threatened to sue IBM for infringing DRI's intellectual property , and IBM agreed to offer CP/M-86 as an alternative operating system on
889-413: A ROM firmware chip) loads the operating system from the disk in drive A: . By modern standards CP/M is primitive, owing to the extreme constraints on program size. With version 1.0 there is no provision for detecting a changed disk. If a user changes disks without manually rereading the disk directory the system writes on the new disk using the old disk's directory information, ruining the data stored on
1016-515: A big opening" for Concurrent CP/M-86 . On the IBM PC, however, at US$ 240 per copy for IBM's version, CP/M-86 sold poorly compared to the US$ 40 PC ;DOS; one survey found that 96.3% of IBM PCs were ordered with DOS, compared to 3.4% with CP/M-86 or Concurrent CP/M-86. In mid-1982 Lifeboat Associates , perhaps the largest CP/M software vendor, announced its support for DOS over CP/M-86 on
1143-669: A collection of links. In his book Dave Barry in Cyberspace , humorist Dave Barry has fun with Pournelle's guru column in Byte magazine. Pournelle, in collaboration with his wife, Roberta (who was an expert on reading education) wrote the commercial education software program called Reading: The Learning Connection. Pournelle served as campaign research director for the mayoral campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Democrat), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori . The election took place on May 27, 1969. Pournelle
1270-533: A college-undergraduate assistant and up to myself. (Not that I'm the last word in sophistication, but I do sit here and pound this machine a lot; if I can't get something to work, it takes an expert.) Fair warning, then: the very nature of this column limits its scope. I can't talk about anything I can't run on my machines, nor am I likely to discuss things I have no use for. Among recurring characters were Pournelle's family members, friends, and many computers. He introduced to readers "my friend Ezekiel, who happens to be
1397-468: A competitor in the spreadsheet market in the MS-DOS world. AutoCAD , a CAD application from Autodesk debuted on CP/M. A host of compilers and interpreters for popular programming languages of the time (such as BASIC , Borland 's Turbo Pascal , FORTRAN and even PL/I ) were available, among them several of the earliest Microsoft products. CP/M software often came with installers that adapted it to
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#17327799512101524-689: A computer to write in 1977 on the advice of his "mad" friend Dan MacLean. He wrote the "Computing at Chaos Manor" column in Byte , describing experiences with computer hardware and software, some purchased and some sent by vendors for review, at his home office. Because Pournelle was then, according to the magazine, "virtually Byte ' s only writer who was a mere user—he didn't create compilers and computers, he merely used them", it began as "The User's Column" in July 1980. Subtitled "Omikron TRS-80 Boards, NEWDOS+, and Sundry Other Matters", an Editor's Note accompanied
1651-528: A corporation change-of-name filing to Digital Research, Inc. By September 1981, Digital Research had sold more than 250,000 CP/M licenses; InfoWorld stated that the actual market was likely larger because of sublicenses. Many different companies produced CP/M-based computers for many different markets; the magazine stated that "CP/M is well on its way to establishing itself as the small-computer operating system". The companies chose to support CP/M because of its large library of software. The Xerox 820 ran
1778-780: A directory except those marked with the SYS attribute), DIRSYS / DIRS (list files marked with the SYS attribute in the directory), ERASE / ERA (delete a file), RENAME / REN (rename a file), TYPE / TYP (display contents of an ASCII character file), and USER / USE (change user number) as built-in commands: CP/M 3 allows the user to abbreviate the built-in commands. Transient commands in CP/M 3 include COPYSYS , DATE , DEVICE , DUMP , ED , GET , HELP , HEXCOM , INITDIR , LINK , MAC , PIP, PUT , RMAC , SET , SETDEF , SHOW , SID , SUBMIT , and XREF . The Basic Disk Operating System, or BDOS, provides access to such operations as opening
1905-464: A directory or ERA to delete a file) or loads and starts an executable file of the given name (transient commands such as PIP.COM to copy files or STAT.COM to show various file and system information). Third-party applications for CP/M are also essentially transient commands. The BDOS, CCP and standard transient commands are the same in all installations of a particular revision of CP/M, but the BIOS portion
2032-449: A dozen different CP/M systems, plus two generic versions. The operating system was described as a " software bus ", allowing multiple programs to interact with different hardware in a standardized way. Programs written for CP/M were typically portable among different machines, usually requiring only the specification of the escape sequences for control of the screen and printer. This portability made CP/M popular, and much more software
2159-429: A file, output to the console, or printing. Application programs load processor registers with a function code for the operation, and addresses for parameters or memory buffers , and call a fixed address in memory. Since the address is the same independent of the amount of memory in the system, application programs run the same way for any type or configuration of hardware. The Basic Input Output System or BIOS, provides
2286-553: A fruitful collaboration with Larry Niven ; he has also collaborated on novels with Roland J. Green , Michael F. Flynn , and Steven Barnes , and collaborated as an editor on an anthology series The Endless Frontier with John F. Carr . In 2010, his daughter Jennifer R. Pournelle (writing as J.R. Pournelle), an archaeology professor, e-published a novel Outies , an authorized sequel to the Mote in God's Eye series. Pournelle began using
2413-527: A government job for Pournelle's son, Richard. At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on "a science fiction political thriller." Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book, Window of Opportunity (1985). Years after Byte shuttered, Pournelle wrote his Chaos Manor column online. He reprised it at Byte.com, which he helped launch with journalist Gina Smith , John C. Dvorak , and others. However, after
2540-627: A history of computing. A memorable column in August 1989 was "The Great Power Spike", which gives a digital necropsy of his electronic equipment after high voltage transmission wires dropped onto the power line for his neighborhood. After the print version of Byte ended publication in the United States, Pournelle continued publishing the column for the online version and international print editions of Byte . In July 2006, Pournelle and Byte declined to renew their contract and Pournelle moved
2667-520: A limited time offer, and advertisements stated that the applications were self-booting disks , which did not require loading CP/M-86 first. In January 1984, DRI also announced Kanji CP/M-86, a Japanese version of CP/M-86, for nine Japanese companies including Mitsubishi Electric Corporation , Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. , Sord Computer Corp. In December 1984 Fujitsu announced a number of FM-16 -based machines using Kanji CP/M-86. CP/M-86 and DOS had very similar functionality, but were not compatible because
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#17327799512102794-400: A magnetic storage medium, and to load and run programs stored on a disk. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors . The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers became an early standard in the microcomputer industry. This computer platform
2921-671: A number of years was a high church Anglican , in part because Anglican theology was virtually identical to Catholic theology , with the exception that the Anglicans accepted as moral the use of birth control. Pournelle eventually returned to the Catholic Church, as his other beliefs were consistent with the Catholic communion, although he did not agree with the Church's position on birth control. Despite his estrangement from
3048-478: A part of the Amateur Computer Club of New Jersey . ZCPR2 was released on 14 February 1983. It was released as a set of ten disks from SIG/M. ZCPR2 was upgraded to 2.3, and also was released in 8080 code, permitting the use of ZCPR2 on 8080 and 8085 systems. ZCPR3 was released on 14 July 1984, as a set of nine disks from SIG/M. The code for ZCPR3 could also be compiled (with reduced features) for
3175-516: A prevailing naming scheme of the time, as in Kildall's PL/M language, and Prime Computer's PL/P ( Programming Language for Prime ), both suggesting IBM's PL/I ; and IBM's CP/CMS operating system, which Kildall had used when working at the NPS. This renaming of CP/M was part of a larger effort by Kildall and his wife with business partner, Dorothy McEwen to convert Kildall's personal project of CP/M and
3302-611: A pro- Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction . During the 1970s and 1980s, he also published articles on military tactics and war gaming in the military simulations industry in Avalon Hill 's magazine The General . That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games. Two of his collaborations with Larry Niven reached
3429-508: A program was not standardized, so that there is no single option character that differentiated options from file names. Different programs can and do use different characters. The CP/M Console Command Processor includes DIR , ERA , REN , SAVE , TYPE , and USER as built-in commands. Transient commands in CP/M include ASM , DDT , DUMP , ED , LOAD , MOVCPM [ pl ] , PIP , STAT , SUBMIT , and SYSGEN . CP/M Plus (CP/M Version 3) includes DIR (display list of files from
3556-789: A relocating assembler and linker. CP/M 3 was available for the last generation of 8-bit computers, notably the Amstrad PCW, the Amstrad CPC , the ZX Spectrum +3 , the Commodore 128 , MSX machines and the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4 . There were versions of CP/M for some 16-bit CPUs as well. The first version in the 16-bit family was CP/M-86 for the Intel 8086 in November 1981. Kathryn Strutynski
3683-450: A result, some systems had more TPA memory available than others. Bank switching was a common technique that allowed systems to have a large TPA while switching out ROM or video memory space as needed. CP/M 3.0 allowed parts of the BDOS to be in bank-switched memory as well. Jerry Pournelle Jerry Eugene Pournelle ( / p ʊər ˈ n ɛ l / ; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017)
3810-684: A semi-regular (i.e.: every 2 to 3 months) basis, which would cover the wild microcomputer goings-on at the Pournelle House ("Chaos Manor") in Southern California. We said yes. Herewith the first installment ... Pournelle stated that This will be a column by and for computer users, and with rare exceptions I won't discuss anything I haven't installed and implemented here in Chaos Manor. At Chaos Manor we have computer users ranging in sophistication from my 9-year-old through
3937-413: A sequel to Space Viking but abandoned this in the early 1990s, however John F. Carr and Mike Robertson completed this sequel, entitled The Last Space Viking , and it was published in 2011. In 2013, Variety reported that motion picture rights to Pournelle's novel Janissaries had been acquired by the newly formed Goddard Film Group, headed by Gary Goddard . The IMDb website reported that
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4064-502: A shakeup, he announced that rather than stay at United Business Media, he would follow Smith, Dvorak, and 14 other news journalists to start an independent tech and politics site called anewdomain.net. As an active director of that site and others it launched, Pournelle wrote, edited, and worked with young writers and journalists on the craft of writing about science and tech. Beginning during his tenure at Boeing Company, Pournelle submitted science fiction short stories to John W. Campbell ,
4191-469: A term as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America . Pournelle's journalism focused primarily on the computer industry, astronomy, and space exploration. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, he contributed to the computer magazine Byte , writing from the viewpoint of an intelligent user, with the oft-cited credo, "We do this stuff so you won't have to." He created one of
4318-751: A textbook at the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs), the Air War College , and the National War College . He told fellow author Robert Heinlein , Pournelle recalled, "that once I got into advance plans at Boeing I probably wrote more science fiction than he did, and I didn't have to put characters in mine". In the late 1950s, while conducting operations research at
4445-530: A user-installed overlay containing all the code required to access a particular machine's serial port. WordStar, one of the first widely used word processors , and dBase , an early and popular database program for microcomputers, were originally written for CP/M. Two early outliners , KAMAS (Knowledge and Mind Amplification System) and its cut-down successor Out-Think (without programming facilities and retooled for 8080/V20 compatibility) were also written for CP/M, though later rewritten for MS-DOS. Turbo Pascal ,
4572-431: A website with a daily online journal, "View from Chaos Manor," a blog dating from before the use of that term. It is a collection of his "Views" and "Mail" from a large variety of readers. This is a continuation of his 1980s blog-like online journal on GEnie . He said he resists using the term "blog" because he considered the word ugly, and because he maintained that his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than
4699-540: A wide variety of computers. The source code for BASIC programs was easily accessible, and most forms of copy protection were ineffective on the operating system. A Kaypro II owner, for example, would obtain software on Xerox 820 format, then copy it to and run it from Kaypro-format disks. The lack of standardized graphics support limited video games , but various character and text-based games were ported , such as Telengard , Gorillas , Hamurabi , Lunar Lander , along with early interactive fiction including
4826-518: Is a cartesian diagram in which the X-axis gauges opinion toward state and centralized government (farthest right being state worship, farthest left being the idea of a state as the "ultimate evil"), and the Y-axis measures the belief that all problems in society have rational solutions (top being complete confidence in rational planning, bottom being complete lack of confidence in rational planning). In
4953-451: Is always adapted to the particular hardware. Adding memory to a computer, for example, means that the CP/M system must be reinstalled to allow transient programs to use the additional memory space. A utility program (MOVCPM) is provided with system distribution that allows relocating the object code to different memory areas. The utility program adjusts the addresses in absolute jump and subroutine call instructions to new addresses required by
5080-552: The Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson , as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers , although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these. Pournelle was one of the few close friends of H. Beam Piper and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper's Terro-Human Future History. This right has been recognized by the Piper estate. Pournelle worked for some years on
5207-534: The Zork series and Colossal Cave Adventure . Text adventure specialist Infocom was one of the few publishers to consistently release their games in CP/M format. Lifeboat Associates started collecting and distributing user-written "free" software. One of the first was XMODEM , which allowed reliable file transfers via modem and phone line. Another program native to CP/M was the outline processor KAMAS. The read/write memory between address 0100 hexadecimal and
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5334-830: The De La Salle Christian Brothers ; despite its name, it was a high school at the time. He served in the United States Army during the Korean War . In 1953–54, after his military service, Pournelle attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Subsequently, he studied at the University of Washington , where he received a B.S. in psychology on June 11, 1955; an M.S. in psychology (experimental statistics) on March 21, 1958; and
5461-458: The IBM PC , the as-yet unreleased CP/M-86 was its first choice for an operating system because CP/M had the most applications at the time. Negotiations between Digital Research and IBM quickly deteriorated over IBM's non-disclosure agreement and its insistence on a one-time fee rather than DRI's usual royalty licensing plan. After discussions with Microsoft , IBM decided to use 86-DOS (QDOS),
5588-589: The PDP-11 and OS/8 for the PDP-8 . Commands take the form of a keyword followed by a list of parameters separated by spaces or special characters. Similar to a Unix shell builtin , if an internal command is recognized, it is carried out by the CCP itself. Otherwise it attempts to find an executable file on the currently logged disk drive and (in later versions) user area, loads it, and passes it any additional parameters from
5715-529: The TOPS-10 operating system of the DECsystem-10 mainframe computer , which Kildall had used as a development environment. An early outside licensee of CP/M was Gnat Computers , an early microcomputer developer out of San Diego, California . In 1977, the company was granted the license to use CP/M 1.0 for any micro they desired for $ 90. Within the year, demand for CP/M was so high that Digital Research
5842-486: The extension .COM on disk. The BIOS directly controls hardware components other than the CPU and main memory. It contains functions such as character input and output and the reading and writing of disk sectors. The BDOS implements the CP/M file system and some input/output abstractions (such as redirection) on top of the BIOS. The CCP takes user commands and either executes them directly (internal commands such as DIR to show
5969-441: The 7-bit boundary. In the 8-bit versions, while running, the CP/M operating system loaded into memory has three components: The BIOS and BDOS are memory-resident, while the CCP is memory-resident unless overwritten by an application, in which case it is automatically reloaded after the application finished running. A number of transient commands for standard utilities are also provided. The transient commands reside in files with
6096-429: The 8080 I/O address space. All of these variations in the hardware are concealed from other modules of the system by use of the BIOS, which uses standard entry points for the services required to run CP/M such as character I/O or accessing a disk block. Since support for serial communication to a modem is very rudimentary in the BIOS or may be absent altogether, it is common practice for CP/M programs that use modems to have
6223-421: The 8080 and would run on systems that did not have the requisite Z80 microprocessor. Features of ZCPR as of version 3 included shells, aliases, I/O redirection, flow control, named directories, search paths, custom menus, passwords, and online help. In January 1987, Richard Conn stopped developing ZCPR, and Echelon asked Jay Sage (who already had a privately enhanced ZCPR 3.1) to continue work on it. Thus, ZCPR 3.3
6350-643: The Aerospace Corporation in San Bernardino, California where he was Editor of Project 75 , a major study of all ballistic missile technology for the purpose of making recommendations to the US Air Force on investment in technologies required to build the missile force to be deployed in 1975. After Project 75 was completed Pournelle became manager of several advanced concept studies. At North American Rockwell’s Space Division, Pournelle
6477-429: The CP/M base included Robert "Bob" Silberstein and David "Dave" K. Brown. CP/M originally stood for "Control Program/Monitor", a name which implies a resident monitor —a primitive precursor to the operating system. However, during the conversion of CP/M to a commercial product, trademark registration documents filed in November 1977 gave the product's name as "Control Program for Microcomputers". The CP/M name follows
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#17327799512106604-643: The Catholic Church, he opposed having the government require that Catholic institutions provide access to birth control or abortion. He wrote that Sunday attendance at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles , was part of his family's routine. Upon his death, his family arranged a memorial mass at the church, on 16 September 2017. Pournelle was an intellectual protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan T. Possony . Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). The Strategy has been used as
6731-645: The Digital Research distributed core of CP/M (BDOS, CCP, core transient commands) did not use any of the Z80-specific instructions, many Z80-based systems used Z80 code in the system-specific BIOS, and many applications were dedicated to Z80-based CP/M machines. Digital Research subsequently partnered with Zilog and American Microsystems to produce Personal CP/M, a ROM-based version of the operating system aimed at lower-cost systems that could potentially be equipped without disk drives. First featured in
6858-533: The East-German VEB Robotron Dresden and Energiekombinat [ de ] Berlin. Caldera permitted the redistribution and modification of all original Digital Research files, including source code, related to the CP/M family through Tim Olmstead 's "The Unofficial CP/M Web site" since 1997. After Olmstead's death on 12 September 2001, the free distribution license was refreshed and expanded by Lineo , who had meanwhile become
6985-563: The Human Factors Laboratory at Boeing, where his group did pioneering work on astronaut heat tolerance in extreme environments. His group also did experimental work that resulted in certification of the passenger oxygen system for the Boeing 707 airplane. He later worked as a Systems Analyst in a design and analysis group at the company, where he did strategic analysis of proposed new weapons systems. In 1964, Pournelle joined
7112-536: The IBM PC after DRI threatened legal action, it never overtook Microsoft's system. Most customers were repelled by the significantly greater price IBM charged for CP/M-86 over PC DOS ( US$ 240 and US$ 40, respectively). When Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) put out the Rainbow 100 to compete with IBM, it came with CP/M-80 using a Z80 chip, CP/M-86 or MS-DOS using an 8088 microprocessor, or CP/M-86/80 using both. The Z80 and 8088 CPUs ran concurrently. A benefit of
7239-694: The IBM PC such as the Apricot and Sirius , the intention being that software would be independent of hardware by making standardised operating system calls to a version of the operating system custom tailored to the particular hardware. However, writers of software which required fast performance accessed the IBM PC hardware directly instead of going through the operating system, resulting in PC-specific software which performed better than other MS-DOS and CP/M-86 versions; for example, games would display fast by writing to video memory directly instead of suffering
7366-629: The IBM PC. BYTE warned that IBM, Microsoft, and Lifeboat's support for DOS "poses a serious threat to" CP/M-86, and Jerry Pournelle stated in the magazine that "it is clear that Digital Research made some terrible mistakes in the marketing". By early 1983 DRI began selling CP/M-86 1.1 to end users for US$ 60. Advertisements called CP/M-86 a "terrific value", with "instant access to the largest collection of applications software in existence … hundreds of proven, professional software programs for every business and education need"; it also included Graphics System Extension (GSX), formerly US$ 75. In May 1983
7493-471: The IBM-compatible platform, and it never regained its former popularity. Byte magazine, at the time one of the leading industry magazines for microcomputers, essentially ceased covering CP/M products within a few years of the introduction of the IBM PC. For example, in 1983 there were still a few advertisements for S-100 boards and articles on CP/M software, but by 1987 these were no longer found in
7620-576: The Intel 8080 processor into .A86 source code for the Intel 8086. The translator would also optimize the output for code size and take care of calling conventions, so that CP/M-80 and MP/M-80 programs could be ported to the CP/M-86 and MP/M-86 platforms automatically. XLT86 itself was written in PL/I-80 and was available for CP/M-80 platforms as well as for VAX/VMS . Many expected that CP/M would be
7747-489: The Intel-contracted PL/M compiler into a commercial enterprise. The Kildalls intended to establish the Digital Research brand and its product lines as synonymous with "microcomputer" in the consumer's mind, similar to what IBM and Microsoft together later successfully accomplished in making " personal computer " synonymous with their product offerings. Intergalactic Digital Research, Inc. was later renamed via
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#17327799512107874-517: The NIAT, a custom handheld computer designed for A. C. Nielsen 's internal use with 1 MB of SSD memory. In 1979, a multi-user compatible derivative of CP/M was released. MP/M allowed multiple users to connect to a single computer, using multiple terminals to provide each user with a screen and keyboard. Later versions ran on 16-bit processors. The last 8-bit version of CP/M was version 3, often called CP/M Plus, released in 1983. Its BDOS
8001-686: The OS and BIOS (this was also a common problem in early DOS machines). Bill Gates claimed that the Apple II with a Z-80 SoftCard was the single most-popular CP/M hardware platform. Many different brands of machines ran the operating system, some notable examples being the Altair 8800 , the IMSAI 8080 , the Osborne 1 and Kaypro luggables , and MSX computers. The best-selling CP/M-capable system of all time
8128-510: The PC to settle the claim. Most of the BIOS drivers for CP/M-86 for the IBM PC were written by Andy Johnson-Laird . The IBM PC was announced on 12 August 1981, and the first machines began shipping in October the same year, ahead of schedule. CP/M-86 was one of three operating systems available from IBM, with PC DOS and UCSD p-System . Digital Research's adaptation of CP/M-86 for the IBM PC
8255-478: The PC" than DOS; however, for those who did not plan to program in assembly language, because it cost six times more "CP/M seems a less compelling purchase". It stated that CP/M-86 was strong in areas where DOS was weak, and vice versa, and that the level of application support for each operating system would be most important, although CP/M-86's lack of a run-time version for applications was a weakness. A given version of CP/M-86 has two version numbers. One applies to
8382-565: The Rainbow was that it could continue to run 8-bit CP/M software, preserving a user's possibly sizable investment as they moved into the 16-bit world of MS-DOS. A similar dual-processor adaption for the CompuPro System 816 [ sr ] was named CP/M 8-16 . The CP/M-86 adaptation for the 8085/8088-based Zenith Z-100 also supported running programs for both of its CPUs. Soon following CP/M-86, another 16-bit version of CP/M
8509-502: The S83 was quoted as $ 32 in 1,000 unit quantities. On most machines the bootstrap was a minimal bootloader in ROM combined with some means of minimal bank switching or a means of injecting code on the bus (since the 8080 needs to see boot code at Address 0 for start-up, while CP/M needs RAM there); for others, this bootstrap had to be entered into memory using front-panel controls each time
8636-543: The Sharp MZ-800, a cassette-based system with optional disk drives, Personal CP/M was described as having been "rewritten to take advantage of the enhanced Z-80 instruction set" as opposed to preserving portability with the 8080. American Microsystems announced a Z80-compatible microprocessor, the S83, featuring 8 KB of in-package ROM for the operating system and BIOS, together with comprehensive logic for interfacing with 64-kilobit dynamic RAM devices. Unit pricing of
8763-603: The United States. According to a Wall Street Journal article, "Pournelle estimates that for what the Iraq war has cost so far, the United States could have paid for a network of nuclear power stations sufficient to achieve energy independence, and bankrupt the Arabs for once and for all." Pournelle created the Pournelle chart in his doctoral dissertation, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies. It
8890-413: The accompanying letter column became "Chaos Manor Mail". Pournelle still used "Zeke" to write as late as 1987, but admitted that he would soon have to use PCs because tools like Borland Sidekick were unavailable. He hesitated, Pournelle said, because Niven would buy two exact copies of his writing computer and software. He announced in February 1989 that the Smithsonian had asked for "Zeke" as part of
9017-402: The ancestor of Borland Delphi , and Multiplan , the ancestor of Microsoft Excel , also debuted on CP/M before MS-DOS versions became available. VisiCalc , the first-ever spreadsheet program, was made available for CP/M. Another company, Sorcim , created its SuperCalc spreadsheet for CP/M, which would go on to become the market leader and de facto standard on CP/M. Supercalc would go on to be
9144-614: The approximate accuracy of the term paleoconservatism as applying to him. He distinguished his conservativism from the alternative neoconservatism , noting that he had been drummed out of the Conservative movement by "the egregious Frum", referring to prominent neoconservative, David Frum . Notably, Pournelle opposed the Gulf War and the Iraq War , maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for
9271-434: The article: The other day we were sitting around the Byte offices listening to software and hardware explosions going off around us in the microcomputer world. We wondered, "Who could cover some of the latest developments for us in a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) style?" The phone rang. It was Jerry Pournelle with an idea for a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) series of articles to be presented in Byte on
9398-420: The basic concepts and mechanisms of early versions of MS-DOS resembled those of CP/M. Internals like file-handling data structures were identical, and both referred to disk drives with a letter ( A: , B: , etc.). MS-DOS's main innovation was its FAT file system. This similarity made it easier to port popular CP/M software like WordStar and dBase . However, CP/M's concept of separate user areas for files on
9525-531: The blocking and deblocking and the management of a disk buffer area is handled by model-specific code in the BIOS. Customization is required because hardware choices are not constrained by compatibility with any one popular standard. For example, some manufacturers designed built-in integrated video display systems, while others relied on separate computer terminals. Serial ports for printers and modems can use different types of UART chips, and port addresses are not fixed. Some machines use memory-mapped I/O instead of
9652-512: The book Road to Survival by the ecologist (and ornithologist) William Vogt , who depicted an Earth denuded of species other than humans, all of them headed for squalor. Concerned about the Malthusian dangers of human overpopulation , and considering the Catholic Church's position on contraception to be untenable, he left the Catholic Church while an undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Pournelle eventually returned to religion, and for
9779-399: The column to his own web site, Chaos Manor Reviews. Pournelle claimed to be the first author to have written a published book contribution using a word processor on a personal computer , in 1977. In the 1980s, Pournelle was an editor and columnist for Survive , a survivalist magazine. He wrote the monthly column "The Micro Revolution" for Popular Computing from April 1984 until
9906-452: The command line. These are referred to as "transient" programs. On completion, BDOS will reload the CCP if it has been overwritten by application programs — this allows transient programs a larger memory space. The commands themselves can sometimes be obscure. For instance, the command to duplicate files is named PIP (Peripheral-Interchange-Program), the name of the old DEC utility used for that purpose. The format of parameters given to
10033-429: The company announced that it would offer DOS versions of all of its languages and utilities. It stated that "obviously, PC DOS has made great market penetration on the IBM PC; we have to admit that", but claimed that "the fact that CP/M-86 has not done as well as DRI had hoped has nothing to do with our decision". By early 1984 DRI gave free copies of Concurrent CP/M-86 to those who purchased two CP/M-86 applications as
10160-466: The company, he envisioned a weapon consisting of massive tungsten rods dropped from high above the Earth. These super-dense, super-fast kinetic energy projectiles delivered enormous destructive force to the target without contaminating the environs with radioactive isotopes, as would occur with a nuclear bomb. Pournelle named his superweapon “Project Thor”. Others called it " Rods from God ". Pournelle headed
10287-423: The couple had five children. His wife, and son, naval officer Phillip, and daughter, archaeologist Jennifer, have also written science fiction in collaboration with their father. In 2008, Pournelle battled a brain tumor, which appeared to respond favorably to radiation treatment. An August 28, 2008 report on his weblog claimed he was now cancer-free. Pournelle suffered a stroke on December 16, 2014, for which he
10414-567: The delay of making a call to the operating system, which would then write to a hardware-dependent memory location. Non-PC-compatible computers were soon replaced by models with hardware which behaved identically to the PC's. A consequence of the universal adoption of detailed PC architecture was that no more than 640 kilobytes of memory were supported; early machines running MS-DOS and CP/M-86 did not suffer from this restriction, and some could make use of nearly one megabyte of RAM. PC Magazine wrote that CP/M-86 "in several ways seems better fitted to
10541-403: The disk. From version 1.1 or 1.2 onwards, changing a disk then trying to write to it before its directory is read will cause a fatal error to be signalled. This avoids overwriting the disk but requires a reboot and loss of the data to be stored on disk. The majority of the complexity in CP/M is isolated in the BDOS, and to a lesser extent, the CCP and transient commands. This meant that by porting
10668-622: The earliest versions of what would become the Strategic Defense Initiative . Pournelle was born in Shreveport, Louisiana , the seat of Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana , and later lived with his family in Capleville, Tennessee , an unincorporated area near Memphis . Percival Pournelle, his father, was a radio advertising executive and general manager of several radio stations. Ruth Pournelle, his mother,
10795-503: The editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact ), but Campbell did not accept any of Pournelle's submissions until shortly before Campbell's death in 1971, when he accepted for publication Pournelle's novelette "Peace with Honor." From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong military themes. Several books are centered on a fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion . There are strong parallels between these stories and
10922-451: The film was in development, and that husband-and-wife writing team, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens , had written the screenplay. Pournelle began fiction writing non-SF work under a pseudonym in 1965. His early SF was published under the name "Wade Curtis", in Analog and other magazines. Some works were also published under the name "J.E. Pournelle". In the mid-1970s, Pournelle began
11049-488: The first blogs, entitled "Chaos Manor", which included commentary about politics, computer technology, space technology, and science fiction. Pournelle held paleoconservative political views, which were sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy , which developed some of the Reagan Administration 's space initiatives, including
11176-532: The following components: The only hardware system that CP/M, as sold by Digital Research, would support was the Intel 8080 Development System. Manufacturers of CP/M-compatible systems customized portions of the operating system for their own combination of installed memory, disk drives, and console devices. CP/M would also run on systems based on the Zilog Z80 processor since the Z80 was compatible with 8080 code. While
11303-409: The home market had been largely unsuccessful and most CP/M software was too expensive for home users. In 1986 the magazine stated that Kaypro had stopped production of 8-bit CP/M-based models to concentrate on sales of MS-DOS compatible systems, long after most other vendors had ceased production of new equipment and software for CP/M. CP/M rapidly lost market share as the microcomputing market moved to
11430-460: The keyboard and conveys results to the terminal. CP/M itself works with either a printing terminal or a video terminal. All CP/M commands have to be typed in on the command line . The console most often displays the A>; prompt, to indicate the current default disk drive. When used with a video terminal, this is usually followed by a blinking cursor supplied by the terminal. The CCP awaits input from
11557-546: The limited number of simple routines in the BIOS to a particular hardware platform, the entire OS would work. This significantly reduced the development time needed to support new machines, and was one of the main reasons for CP/M's widespread use. Today this sort of abstraction is common to most OSs (a hardware abstraction layer ), but at the time of CP/M's birth, OSs were typically intended to run on only one machine platform, and multilayer designs were considered unnecessary. The Console Command Processor, or CCP, accepts input from
11684-480: The lowest address of the BDOS was the Transient Program Area (TPA) available for CP/M application programs. Although all Z80 and 8080 processors could address 64 kilobytes of memory, the amount available for application programs could vary, depending on the design of the particular computer. Some computers used large parts of the address space for such things as BIOS ROMs, or video display memory. As
11811-434: The lowest level functions required by the operating system. These include reading or writing single characters to the system console and reading or writing a sector of data from the disk. The BDOS handles some of the buffering of data from the diskette, but before CP/M 3.0 it assumes a disk sector size fixed at 128 bytes, as used on single-density 8-inch floppy disks. Since most 5.25-inch disk formats use larger sectors,
11938-434: The magazine's closure in December 1985. The column focused on the ways microcomputers were reshaping society. In 2011, Pournelle joined journalist Gina Smith , pundit John C. Dvorak , political cartoonist Ted Rall , and several other Byte.com staff reporters to launch an independent tech and political news site, aNewDomain.net Pournelle served as director of aNewDomain until his death. After 1998, Pournelle maintained
12065-513: The magazine. Later versions of CP/M-86 made significant strides in performance and usability and were made compatible with MS-DOS. To reflect this compatibility the name was changed, and CP/M-86 became DOS Plus , which in turn became DR-DOS . ZCPR (the Z80 Command Processor Replacement) was introduced on 2 February 1982 as a drop-in replacement for the standard Digital Research console command processor (CCP) and
12192-434: The new location of the operating system in processor memory. This newly patched version can then be saved on a new disk, allowing application programs to access the additional memory made available by moving the system components. Once installed, the operating system (BIOS, BDOS and CCP) is stored in reserved areas at the beginning of any disk which can be used to boot the system. On start-up, the bootloader (usually contained in
12319-451: The operating system because "where there are literally thousands of programs written for it, it would be unwise not to take advantage of it", Xerox said. (Xerox included a Howard W. Sams CP/M manual as compensation for Digital Research's documentation, which InfoWorld described as atrocious, incomplete, incomprehensible, and poorly indexed. ) By 1984, Columbia University used the same source code to build Kermit binaries for more than
12446-409: The owner of those Digital Research assets, on 19 October 2001. CP/M CP/M , originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers , is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080 / 85 -based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. CP/M is a disk operating system and its purpose is to organize files on
12573-533: The policy, we certainly did not write the speech… We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War". The Council's first report in 1980 became the transition team policy paper on space for the incoming Reagan administration. The third report was quoted in the Reagan "Star Wars" speech. James Wheatfield wrote that "Pournelle delights in setting up complex background situations and plots, leading
12700-473: The reader step by step towards a solution which is the very opposite of politically correct and… defying a dissenting reader to find where in this logical chain he or she would have acted differently." Pournelle suggested several "laws". He used the term "Pournelle's law" for the expression "One user, one CPU". He later amended this to "One user, at least one CPU" in a column in InfoWorld . He also used
12827-513: The same disk was never ported to MS-DOS. Since MS-DOS had access to more memory (as few IBM PCs were sold with less than 64 KB of memory, while CP/M could run in 16 KB if necessary), more commands were built into the command-line shell , making MS-DOS somewhat faster and easier to use on floppy-based computers. Although one of the first peripherals for the IBM PC was a SoftCard-like expansion card that let it run 8-bit CP/M software, InfoWorld stated in 1984 that efforts to introduce CP/M to
12954-513: The standard operating system for 16-bit computers. In 1980 IBM approached Digital Research, at Bill Gates ' suggestion, to license a forthcoming version of CP/M for its new product, the IBM Personal Computer. Upon the failure to obtain a signed non-disclosure agreement , the talks failed, and IBM instead contracted with Microsoft to provide an operating system. The resulting product, MS-DOS , soon began outselling CP/M. Many of
13081-495: The system calls for the same functions and program file formats were different, so two versions of the same software had to be produced and marketed to run under both operating systems. The command interface again had similar functionality but different syntax; where CP/M-86 (and CP/M) copied file SOURCE to TARGET with the command PIP TARGET=SOURCE , DOS used COPY SOURCE TARGET . Initially MS-DOS and CP/M-86 also ran on computers not necessarily hardware-compatible with
13208-616: The system was started. CP/M used the 7-bit ASCII set. The other 128 characters made possible by the 8-bit byte were not standardized. For example, one Kaypro used them for Greek characters, and Osborne machines used the 8th bit set to indicate an underlined character. WordStar used the 8th bit as an end-of-word marker. International CP/M systems most commonly used the ISO 646 norm for localized character sets, replacing certain ASCII characters with localized characters rather than adding them beyond
13335-489: The term "Pournelle's law" for "Silicon is cheaper than iron." That is, a computer is cheaper to upgrade than replace. A second aspect of this law was Pournelle's prediction that hard disk drives would eventually be replaced by solid-state memory , although he admitted that bubble memory had failed to do so as he had expected. He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cable connections when diagnosing computer problems: "You'll find by and large,
13462-548: The top rankings in the New York Times Best Seller List . In 1977, Lucifer's Hammer reached number two. Footfall — wherein Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character — reached the number one spot in 1986. Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973. In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing
13589-411: The user. A CCP internal command, of the form drive letter followed by a colon, can be used to select the default drive. For example, typing B: and pressing enter at the command prompt changes the default drive to B, and the command prompt then becomes B> to indicate this change. CP/M's command-line interface was patterned after the operating systems from Digital Equipment , such as RT-11 for
13716-583: The whole system and is usually displayed at startup; the other applies to the BDOS kernel . Versions known to exist include: All known Personal CP/M-86 versions contain references to CP/M-86 Plus, suggesting that they are derived from the CP/M-86 ;Plus codebase. A number of 16-bit CP/M-86 derivatives existed in the former East-bloc under the names SCP1700 ( Single User Control Program [ de ] ), CP/K, and K8918-OS. They were produced by
13843-711: Was CP/M-68K for the Motorola 68000 . The original version of CP/M-68K in 1982 was written in Pascal/MT+68k , but it was ported to C later on. CP/M-68K, already running on the Motorola EXORmacs systems, was initially to be used in the Atari ST computer, but Atari decided to go with a newer disk operating system called GEMDOS . CP/M-68K was also used on the SORD M68 and M68MX computers. In 1982, there
13970-560: Was a teacher, although during World War II, she worked in a munitions factory. He attended first grade at St. Anne's Elementary School, in Memphis, which had two grades to a classroom. Beginning with third grade, he attended Coleville Consolidated Elementary School, in Colevile, which had about 25 pupils per grade and four rooms and four teachers for 8 grades Pournelle attended high school at Christian Brothers College in Memphis, run by
14097-454: Was able to increase the license to tens of thousands of dollars. Under Kildall's direction, the development of CP/M 2.0 was mostly carried out by John Pierce in 1978. Kathryn Strutynski , a friend of Kildall from Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), became the fourth employee of Digital Research Inc. in early 1979. She started by debugging CP/M 2.0, and later became influential as key developer for CP/M 2.2 and CP/M Plus. Other early developers of
14224-473: Was added to provide PC DOS compatibility, the system was renamed Concurrent DOS , which later became Multiuser DOS , of which REAL/32 is the latest incarnation. The FlexOS , DOS Plus , and DR DOS families of operating systems started as derivations of Concurrent DOS as well. Digital Research's CP/M-86 was originally announced to be released in November 1979, but was delayed repeatedly. When IBM contacted other companies to obtain components for
14351-466: Was also a port from CP/M-68K to the 16-bit Zilog Z8000 for the Olivetti M20 , written in C , named CP/M-8000 . These 16-bit versions of CP/M required application programs to be re-compiled for the new CPUs. Some programs written in assembly language could be automatically translated for a new processor. One tool for this was Digital Research's XLT86 , which translated .ASM source code for
14478-620: Was an American scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research , a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers . In the 1960s and early 1970s, he worked in the aerospace industry, but eventually focused on his writing career. In an obituary in Gizmodo , he was described as "a tireless ambassador for the future." Pournelle's hard science fiction writing received multiple awards. In addition to his solo writing, he wrote several novels with collaborators including Larry Niven . Pournelle served
14605-605: Was associate director of operations research, where he took part in the Apollo program and general operations. He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. In 1989, Pournelle, Max Hunter , and retired Army Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham made a presentation to then Vice President Dan Quayle promoting development of the DC-X rocket. Pournelle was among those who in 1968 signed
14732-399: Was designed by David K. Brown. It incorporated the bank switching memory management of MP/M in a single-user single-task operating system compatible with CP/M 2.2 applications. CP/M 3 could therefore use more than 64 KB of memory on an 8080 or Z80 processor. The system could be configured to support date stamping of files. The operating system distribution software also included
14859-467: Was developed and released. ZCPR 3.3 no longer supported the 8080 series of microprocessors, and added the most features of any upgrade in the ZCPR line. ZCPR 3.3 also included a full complement of utilities with considerably extended capabilities. While enthusiastically supported by the CP/M user base of the time, ZCPR alone was insufficient to slow the demise of CP/M. A minimal 8-bit CP/M system would contain
14986-460: Was eventually displaced by DOS following the 1981 introduction of the IBM PC . Gary Kildall originally developed CP/M during 1974, as an operating system to run on an Intel Intellec-8 development system, equipped with a Shugart Associates 8-inch floppy-disk drive interfaced via a custom floppy-disk controller . It was written in Kildall's own PL/M ( Programming Language for Microcomputers ). Various aspects of CP/M were influenced by
15113-479: Was hospitalized for a time. By June 2015, he was writing again, though impairment from the stroke had slowed his typing. Pournelle died in his sleep of heart failure at his home in Studio City , California, on September 8, 2017. Pournelle was raised a Unitarian . He converted to Roman Catholicism while attending Christian Brothers College. Pournelle was introduced to Malthusian principles upon reading
15240-426: Was initially written by a group of computer hobbyists who called themselves "The CCP Group". They were Frank Wancho, Keith Petersen (the archivist behind Simtel at the time), Ron Fowler, Charlie Strom, Bob Mathias, and Richard Conn. Richard was, in fact, the driving force in this group (all of whom maintained contact through email). ZCPR1 was released on a disk put out by SIG/M (Special Interest Group/Microcomputers),
15367-738: Was later named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks. After leaving Yorty's office, in 1970 he was a consultant to the Professional Educators of Los Angeles (PELA), a group opposed to the unionization of school teachers in LA. He is sometimes quoted as describing his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan." Pournelle resisted others classifying him into any particular political group, but acknowledged
15494-582: Was named CP/M-86/80, whereas the version for the CompuPro System 816 [ sr ] was named CP/M 8-16 (see also: MP/M 8-16 ). The version of CP/M-86 for the 8085/8088-based Zenith Z-100 supported running programs for both processors as well. When PC clones came about, Microsoft licensed MS-DOS to other companies as well. Experts found that the two operating systems were technically comparable, with CP/M-86 having better memory management but DOS being faster. BYTE speculated that Microsoft reserving multitasking for Xenix "appears to leave
15621-562: Was probably the Amstrad PCW . In the UK, CP/M was also available on Research Machines educational computers (with the CP/M source code published as an educational resource), and for the BBC Micro when equipped with a Z80 co-processor. Furthermore, it was available for the Amstrad CPC series, the Commodore 128 , TRS-80 , and later models of the ZX Spectrum . CP/M 3 was also used on
15748-473: Was released six months after PC DOS in spring 1982, and porting applications from CP/M-80 to either operating system was about equally difficult. In November 1981, Digital Research also released a version for the proprietary IBM Displaywriter . On some dual-processor 8-bit/16-bit computers special versions of CP/M-86 could natively run CP/M-86 and CP/M-80 applications. A version for the DEC Rainbow
15875-465: Was the project manager for the evolving CP/M-86 line of operating systems. At this point, the original 8-bit CP/M became known by the retronym CP/M-80 to avoid confusion. CP/M-86 was expected to be the standard operating system of the new IBM PCs , but DRI and IBM were unable to negotiate development and licensing terms. IBM turned to Microsoft instead, and Microsoft delivered PC DOS based on 86-DOS . Although CP/M-86 became an option for
16002-470: Was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s. CP/M increased the market size for both hardware and software by greatly reducing the amount of programming required to port an application to a new manufacturer's computer. An important driver of software innovation was the advent of (comparatively) low-cost microcomputers running CP/M, as independent programmers and hackers bought them and shared their creations in user groups . CP/M
16129-422: Was written for CP/M than for operating systems that ran on only one brand of hardware. One restriction on portability was that certain programs used the extended instruction set of the Z80 processor and would not operate on an 8080 or 8085 processor. Another was graphics routines, especially in games and graphics programs, which were generally machine-specific as they used direct hardware access for speed, bypassing
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