OK now that the ALS CPM card is up and running with CPM 3
I now have to get software that I can run on it.
I know in the old days people just sent the files over serial. These days I think we have more options.
So first, this is on an Apple II, not plus or IIe so I can't run ProDos above 1.1/1.2.
I have a super serial card, CFFA3000 and a couple of Disk II drives.
Is there an easy way with the CFFA3000, I don't mind having a different USB memory stick for CPM because I have an extension cable for outside the case access. The super serial would be the most inconvenient because where the machine is to be located I have to unplug and replug in the serial cable when I need it.
It will be nice to play some CPM games eventually and it also removed the temptation to put disk drives on my Sol-20 and mess with personality modules so I can boot CPM on it.
Thanks,
Corey
Yes, you copy the .dsk images on to your USB or CF card and plug it into the CFFA3000. You can copy them back off again to move files the other way. What am I missing?
I tried to boot CPM off of a CFFA3000, and couldn't make it work. Is it possible to do, and I am just missing something?
It works to boot CP/M off a CFFA3000 if you are using the Disk II emulation and have the card either physically located in slot 6 (and lose SmartPort drives) or logically locate the Disk II emulation in slot 6 from the card physically inserted elsewhere. There are ways to have larger partition support, but that's much more complex. Sticking to a stock Disk II setup is simplest.
Hello Corey,
well it seems i have ro destroy one illusion....
You will get nearly no game running with CP/M.......
CP/M was upmost used for commercial and scientific usage....
for commercial usage there was DBase....
and several other officeprograms like Wordstar, Multiplan....
and for scientific usage there were the different kinds of programming languages:
muLISP, LISP, Prolog and some other derivates for modelling artificial intelligence,
COBOL for commercial programs,
C, C++, Fortran and about 10 different kinds of PASCAL ( mostly used Turbo Pascal and MT+ Pascal ) for scientific programs.... ( for example most programs witten for LABs and automotive have been written in C or in Pascal ),
about 6 or 7 different versions of BASIC including GBasic for graphics usage....
PL1 one of the oldest Programming languages,
last not least the very first programs used for CAD and Robotics have also been made with CP/M.....
so in general CP/M was used upmost for programming applications for own use....
and most of them have been compilers.... only very few of the programming languages have been interpreters that could be used for "ready to run" tryouts...
only in commercial use there have been "ready to use" programs available .... in most cases textprograms and databases....
sincerely speedyG
The only game that I even ran under CP/M was Colossal Cavern. This is one of the oldest adventure games out there. It was recompiled for many OS platforms. I spent many hours in college trying to navigate the maze. I would have to fire-up my KAYPRO to see if I still have a copy.
OK, here is a loaded trivia question; what does CP/M stand for????????
First: not to forget the very classic ASCII version of "Lode Runner"........
second.... i´ll leave it for the community...
proposal: solution by pm....
Control Program for Microprocessors.. IIRC
Which was sold by Digital Research... Trivia Question... What was the Original Name of "Digital Research"???
I had to cheat and use Google to find out. Intergalactic Digital Research
I mean the text games. There were plenty. I'm not a giant arcade game person these days. It's the really retro stuff I like.
As for te CFFA, I guess I'll play more with it and see how it goes.
Cheers,
Corey
I am a big fan of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and in 1986 bought the first Four books in Paperback while in Canada ( Printed in the UK, much nicer than the Silly US Covers ).. When I heard the Original Name of Digital Research, I just about fell over Laughing....
What does CP/M stand for???
I asked this lame question to see what answers would be returned.
I first used CP/M in 1979 on a IMSAI system. At that time CP/M stood for Control Program/Monitor. This is the definition that has stuck with me for several decades.
A few months ago I found a manual for my Microsoft Premium Softcard. CP/M was defined in the manual as Control Program for Microprocessors. This was a kick in the head and made no sense.
What is even funnier is that I work with Digital Research in evaluating DR-DOS for the Panasonic computer line. The guys at Digital Research referred to CP/M as Control Program/Monitor.....
Any hoot; this is why I asked.
At least the answer to the ultimate question is still 42:)
Hello to all together,
maybe both answers are just specific and correct in very special "taste" depending from where the system was loaded...
if it was loaded from ROM it maybe claimed to be "Monitor" and when loaded from Disk it may claim itself for "Microcomputers"..... if it´s loaded from ROM its very specific attached to a typ of computer, while if it´s loaded from disk it´s more "general typ for different systems" ( i.e. "microcomputers" depending to inbound driver ).....
therefor "42" might be the best answer.....
in my first computer ( the ZX81 ) it was "42", because it had no disks....
i started with CP/M at the Apple II with softcard, when first exploring history of programming languages like PL1 and Fortran and
later while searching for compilers that can generate fast code for realtime applications and
then later experimenting with other compilers and interpreters while experimenting with artificial inteligence....
and besides working as freelancer with everyday jobs related to databases like those running on IBM38.....
speedyG
I use ADTPro to create floppies from CP/M .dsk/.do images. If you get the CFFA3000 working, that'd be great too.
The problem I run into is that you need Apple II CP/M .dsk/.do images; there is a lot of CP/M code available that is not packaged for the Apple II with CP/M card (http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/).
To create my own .dsk images I use http://www.moria.de/~michael/cpmtools/. Tip: The argument you need to pass to -f is apple-do.
If you decide you want to write your own CP/M code (8080 or z80) via cross-assembly, then I'd take a look at http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/as/.
I have a Microsoft Premium CP/M card installed in slot-0 of my IIe. The CFFA3000 is installed in slot-7. I tried to import the CP/M boot disk image into the CFFA3000 but the CFFA3000 took a fit. If you get yours working, please share the procedure with me.
hello apple2lives,
usually the softcard should be in slot 4 ( default ) or 5 ( alternate ) and the CFFA in slot 5( default ) or slot 6 ( alternate )....
sincerely speedyG
Which one is Slot-0 in a ][e???
I always placed my AE Z80 Card in Slot 5.
Hello MarkO,
i guess he´s talking about the auxiliary slot which is determined for the 80-col card.... i just wonder if he hasn´t destroyed the card or the slot....
speedyG
I often refer to the auxiliary slot as slot-0.
The Microsoft Premium Softcard is only for the IIe. This card is installed in the auxiliary slot and acts as an 80-column card or as a Z80 co-processor for CP/M.
The system also has a Transwarp and CFFA3000 installed but booting is not a problem. The cards all work in harmony and the system functions properly.
I just like to know if there is special magic to import a image of the CP/M boot disk in to the CFFA3000. I have run in to a brick wall trying to do this. I have imported many other disk images but they were in DOS33 and PRODOS formats.
That´s rather easy to answer...
because CP/M has own disk Format you´d have to use the CFFA in "disk emulation" mode....
( i.e. the disks must be loaded as diskimages to the emulation as disk 1 ( A: ) and disk 2 ( b: ) )
Disk 1 => system / Boot Disk / CP/M Master
Disk 2 => Utilities / Program Disk / Data Disk / Wordstar / DBase / Compiler Disk .......
thanks for explenation.... i´ve seen that many CP/M Card´s ... but can´t know them all......
I have by myself 5 different versions of them.....
speedyG
Following this discussion with interest. I am trying to run CPM using a Citech CPM module on an Apple IIc (NOT a IIc Plus). I have the card but can't fins a disk image of CPM version 3 for a 5.25 inch 140 disk (I don't have an 800k 3.5 inch disk). Since the card came installed in the Apple IIc there must be version of CPm 3 for the Apple IIc on a 140k disk. Any help greatly appreciated.
What about the CP/M Disks on the Ascii Express site? They are 5.25" format. http://asciiexpress.net/diskserver/ scroll down the disk list to the CP/M section.
There seems to be an Applicard Boot, a CP/M Boot, and a CP/M GW-Basic disk there. Not sure if they would work for your card or not though but you could give it a try. The site is simple to use to make disks on your Apple using the casette ports.
I know this is older, but I've recently picked up a Microsoft Softcard for my //e so figured I'd chime in with what I am doing.
As far as creating disks initially, I got the Microsoft Softcard disk images from Asimov and ADTPro'd them to real disks on my //e.
Card in slot 5 (slot 4 has the Mockingboard), and it works fine.
So, getting software on there is as simple as finding the Apple disk images (and there are some on Asimov) and writing them out.
That said, there is a lot of CP/M software that isn't in Apple CP/M disk image format.
For that, I found cpmtools. https://www.cpm8680.com/cpmtools/
That let's me copy files from my Windows machine to disk images.
The first issue I had was that there is included in those tools a program to create a disk image, but I can't get that to work. It creates a 16k file that nothing really likes. Could be how I'm using it...
So, what I did was I took one of the Microsoft Softcard CP/M disk images I already had, renamed it to blank.dsk, and then used cpmrm.exe to remove the files from it, so it was blank.
Now that I had an empty blank disk image, I would just copy it to something like data.dsk.
Then I would use cpmcp.exe to copy files onto that image. The format is a bit funky, but (from memory) it is something like:
cpmcp.exe data.dsk pacman.com 0:
(That last part is a zero and a colon. That is required. I'm not familiar enough with CP/M disk formats to know what that is, but it works. Judging by the documentation, that isn't the way described to do it, but... ;-)
Once I had the files I needed on that disk, I would first fire it up in AppleWin to make sure it worked/looked right. Then when it did, I would just ADTPro it to a disk and Bob's your uncle, it works! ;-)
Note: With CP/M, terminal type is everything (well, not everything, but a lot). I found two nice games; Ladder (Donkey Kong inspired) and Catchum (PacMan inspired).
Both kind of worked... ;-) But the screen wasn't clearing properly before/during game play. It was terminal type related.
I did find out that both of those programs apparently had configuration programs (ladconf.com and catconf.com) I could use to reconfigure them to work with the Apple II.
Of course, mostly everywhere I found the games didn't also have those config programs... <sigh>
But when I finally found and used them, the games work great (if a bit slow). When running the config programs, it gives you a huge list of possible terminal types, none of which is Apple... But I found out that choosing Eagle II worked for me...
Note 2: The smaller disk size makes things tricky. I could have a disk with Ladder and Catchum and it's config programs, but that was it. Disk Full. Or I could remove the config programs (you only need them once to get the config right) and then add a few more games to that disk, which I did...Note 3: A lot of CP/M programs online are compressed, with several different types of compression, some of which I couldn't find decompressors for Windows. So you will eventually need CP/M versions of those tools. That is a bit of a hassle, but fairly standard with older machines... ;-)
I have an ALS Z80 card. I had great luck using it with FloppyEmus. I just copied the CP/M disk images onto my SD cards for my FloppyEmus and it ran great. I was doing it in a ][+ with an ALS SmartTerm 80 column card and a vintage Hong Kong/Taiwan full upper and lower case keyboard. That's a really awesome setup for CP/M. About the only thing that might be better is I now have a Franklin ACE 1200... with Franklin's (Videx clone) 80 column card, and a Franlin licensed PCPI Applicard. I also need to get my BASIS 108 running... that's supposed to be a really nice machine for CP/M too... And I've got a generic clone of the MS Softcard Z80 card coming too. In any case I will likely use the FloppyEmu...
Here is my Apple II+ setup to boot directly into CP/M using the CFFA3000:
Slot 0: 16K language card
Slot 3: C80 CPL-3 80-column card with a soft switch attached to the 9334 chip in position F14
Slot 4: Z80 Soft Card
Slot 6: CFFA3000 with the attached CPM_Z80SoftCard.dsk emulated in S7D1 and some other CP/M disk in S7D2
20221012_115107.jpg
I'm glad to see there is a Solution for CP/M on the ][/][+ with the CFFA3000.
I have a AE Z80 Card, someplace at my parents house and a PCPI Appli-Card that came in an Apple ][
I keep one CFFA3000 in a //e and the other in a ][GS. I should move one to the Apple ][ with the Appli-Card and try this...
MarkO
Hi all, I PM'd desiv from Post #23 and he was kind enough to send me a copy of his Ladder / Catchum game disk - wrote it out with ADTPro, and working like a champ. TYSM desiv! File posted below.
p.s. must be run on 80 column capable setup, disk boots to CP/M :-o
Catchum.JPG