ciaraldi@Rochester.ARPA (12/13/83)
From: Mike Ciaraldi <ciaraldi@Rochester.ARPA> Latest word on CP/M-86 family products for the Zenith Z-100. CP/M-86 has reached at least some Heathkit stores but is in tight supply because (supposedly) the machines being sent to the DOD are getting it. Concurrent CP/M-86, ported under contract to Zenith by some West coast software house, was supposed to show up for Beta-test this week, but hasn't. Maybe another week or so. Final release would probably not be until (I'm guessing here, based on how long CP/M-86 took) March, 1984 or after. I finished Taylor's internal version of CCP/M in October, but we will be switching over to the Zenith version when available. My version has some limitations (no Winchester support), screen image not changed when virtual console switches, etc., that would limit its usefulness for the average user. However, the multi-tasking and message-passing work fine (nothing I could do to mess them up!), and that's what we needed for our application. For the record, it took about two months of solid effort to bring up CCP/M, starting from the BIOS which Zenith had already written for CP/M-86. This does not count about two months of of reading the manuals and looking at the BIOS for ZDOS (Zenith MS-DOS) to learn about Z-100 hardware and 8086 assembler. During that time I was doing a lot of other things too. Zenith will also be releasing MP/M-86 arounfd the same time as Concurrent. ZDOS version 2.0 should be available very soon, if it is not already. Mike Ciaraldi ciaraldi@rochester
ciaraldi@Rochester.ARPA (12/17/83)
From: Mike Ciaraldi <ciaraldi@Rochester.ARPA>
The generic version of CCPM I used at Taylor was version 2.0.
For comparison, the one that DRI sells already configured for
the IBM PC is based on version 1.x.
I am pretty sure (just about certain) that the
Zenith CCPM will also be based on version 2, not
on the version 3 that J. Pournelle mentions.
The main features of CCPM 2 vs. 1 are:
Operating system is smaller.
Programs with >64K code now load properly, i.e. you
do not have to use the "R" command that comes with the
DRI C compiler to get them to run.
Since Zenith supports MS-DOS as ZDOS, I presume they will eventually
release a CCPM that runs MS-DOS programs, but not in the initial
release. If the DRI IBM version is out in February, I would guess
the generic version 3 would be available to other vendors around then
or some time after.
More news as it becomes available....
Mike Ciaraldi
ciaraldi@rochesterPOURNE%mit-mc@sri-unix.UUCP (12/30/83)
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE@mit-mc> Would love to have ZDOS 2.0; is the Concurrent CP/M t he new 3.1 that runs PC-DOS inside it? That will be available in th outside world in Feb or March, exists in some development places now, but I know of no Z-100 version as of yet. CCPM 3.1 is WONDERFUL. We've seen CPM-86 for Z-100 sold in local LA heath sotre but oddly enough none has yet been sent to me, although Mr. Winter of ZDS seems inundated by snow and ice in Glenview..