les@proper.UUCP (Les Kent) (03/16/84)
I work at Gifford Computer Systems and the author of MP/M 8-16. I have been
doing a lot of work lately with CCP/M 86 and maybe can shed a little light.
There are three versions of CCP/M. The first version (1.0) was made available
on the IBM PC only. This version was basicly an MP/M 86 kernel with multi
window support built in the XIOS (BIOS). It was fairly primitive but got the
ball rolling for CCP/M and was something impressive and showable.
The next version (2.1) came out with the mutli window support built more into
the operatting system. It was the first "generic" version of CCP/M that OEM's
could purchase a licensee and port it to their hardware. 2.1 was designed
to handle only one physical console but up to as many virtual consoles as
your memory/system could handle. One very important step was they put a
lot of effort into speeding up the disk I/O. They implemented directory
hashing so that looking up files or extents did not have to always read
thru the directory data blocks to find the extent. This feature sped up
disk I/O by leaps and bounds. Also they built buffering into the operatting
system. This is a much better method then XIOS buffering because the
operatting system could better decide what to buffer. I know they spent
effort in cleaning up the kernel to remove interrupt disable windows
to make CCP/M a better real time system. They also allow the XIOS to inform
the BDOS when the disk door has been opened. It will then relog in the drive.
That means the end of ^C. Anyway that is most of the interesting things I
can remember.
Now the soon to be available version (3.1). This version takes all the
features of 2.1 and lets it all be multi user. So now you get the best
of lots of things. Like multi-user, multiple window support, fast disk
I/O and it really works!. Also as part of CCP/M 3.1 they have bundled in
a networking product they call DR Net. This is a fairly nice implementation
where any CCP/M system can either be a server, requester or both. It also
hanldes printers and queues over the network. It works on the approch where
you say that your local drive X: is drive Y: on machine NAME. We have been
running the networking portion in R&D on six machines and it is working out
very nicely. We are working now on fine tunning the network. Yet another
thing they bundled in was GSX. That is their graphics extension software.
Up till now I have not done a thing with it so I have no comment.
The licensees for CCP/M 3.1 should be available next month but I have no idea
when other OEM's will be offering it. Since it has been working out very well
for us and we have been running it for a while I think we will begin to offer it
in about 2 months. There are a few more things I would like to add to it
before it is ready for public consumption.
Some neat extra features about CCP/M from us (like MP/M 8-16 has now) is it
will run either 8 bit CP/M 2.2, MP/M II programs or 16 bit CP/M 86, MP/M 86
programs. Also it will Giffords extensive enhancments like easy configuration
of printers and terminals (Nice ASCII text file), security features like
user accounts and passwords (Like UNIX!), Support for a wide varity of
hard disks and controllers, type-a-head (Some folks still don't do it),
easy hooks for modem communications, electronic mail, reminder files,
appointment scheduling, inter-terminal communication, optional multi-user
modem communications program, and great support to boot!
To the person who could not get any help from our LA systems center on
the way of documentaion or anything about the system. If you send me
your address I can see that one of our nice new typeset, easy to read,
well written documents describing Gifford's MP/M 8-16 and features of MP/M 86
in general. ~250 pages. Of course I can't send it for free but it is only
$35 COD. This is a medium technical type manual. If you want super technical
stuff like system calls or system design then you need DRI's manuals.
Well maybe that explains a few things about Concurrent CP/M.
Les Kent
Gifford Computer Systems
ucbvax!{amd70,dual}!proper!les