gaz@apollo.COM (Gary Zaidenweber) (04/26/89)
Along with the emulators for contemporary machines (MAC and IBM PC) for the ST which we all know about, there is a software-only CP/M emulator for the ST. First, an introduction for those who may not know anything about it: The Atari ST CP/M emulator was apparently written by an outfit in Germany to run on CP/M 68K before 1986. In '85 or '86, Atari commissioned them to port it to the ST and then placed it into the public domain as a way to encourage CP/M users to upgrade without losing access to their investment (sorry for stating the obvious!) It comes with documentation for using CP/M and some of the common CP/M programs, and a small section on writing I/O drivers -- the emulator passes I/O instructions to drivers written in 68K assembly language. What is missing is documentation on how CP/M was implemented on the emulator. My 1st question is this: Can I upgrade the CP/M on the emulator? I'd like to use ZCPR, and consider using some of the other PD components. Has anyone ever done this? (I'm not going to ask if I'm off the wall :-) My second question is this: What type of "terminal" does the emulator emulate? I managed to get a half-decent installation of Wordstar using the menu choice of HZ89 but its not perfect. I also installed the printer using the CP/M lst: device but I can't print from Wordstar, I have to 'print' to a file and then print that out "later". On the other hand, using ^p in Dbase DOES cause the printer to print properly. Any ideas? My final question is about disks: The documentation as well as a very nice help file from Bob Retelle (thanks very much, Bob) says that only single-sided disks work under the emulator. I have found from personal experience that double-sided disks work just fine too, and that the disk-initializer program which comes with the emulator does just fine at utilizing the full disk space. Has anyone using the emulator had any problems which they could reliably attribute to using double-sided disks? And for pie-in-the-sky, has anyone successfully used a hard-disk partition for the CP/M emulator? (An affirmative answer to this last question will make my wife very happy since she will get back the deskspace now occupied by my then-to-be retired REAL CP/M system -- what makes her very happy makes me very happy!) In addition to welcoming comments from current users of the emulator and answers to my questions, I would love: 1) comments from Atari 2) comments from the original developers 3) additional documentation Thanks alot. If I've whetted anyone's appetite, I ftp'ed the emulator package from score.stanford.edu. If there are enough requests, I'll post it to comp.binary.atari.st -- if there are just a few, I'll email it to you personally. -- Gary Zaidenweber | Its 1989: UUCP: umix!apollo!gaz | Do you know where your lawyer is? ARPA: gaz@apollo.COM |
gaz@apollo.COM (Gary Zaidenweber) (04/27/89)
I hate it when I fail to give credit where credit is due. I actually ftp'ed the CPM emulator from radc-softvax.arpa. I notice in some notes I have that it is also available from terminator.cc.umich.edu. Please note, however, that the archive at score.standford.edu is very fine despite its lack of the CP/M emulator file, and I'd like to publicly thank its maintainers as well as the maintainers of the other archives. -- Gary Zaidenweber | Its 1989: UUCP: umix!apollo!gaz | Do you know where your lawyer is? ARPA: gaz@apollo.COM |
gaz@apollo.HP.COM (Gary Zaidenweber) (07/10/90)
From article <4951@brahma.cs.hw.ac.uk>, by neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth): > > The TT has an Appletalk interface. IMHO this is a very smart decision by > Atari. Does Atari have any plans to make native TT software that will use > this on a network say like TOPS with Macs, PCs and Suns? I'm certain > Dave Small will use it when he converts Spectre to the TT. > > On an unrelated topic:- > Is the CPM emulator for the ST in the public domain? If so, is there anyone > willing to mail it to me? Tell me first please. Thanks in advance. > According to a file included with the CP/M emulator, it does appear to be in the public domain, placed there by none other than Atari Corp. (who also appears to be the one who commissioned the port to the ST.) I got it off of Terminator, though I'll be happy to mail it to you if you wish. Please respond by email and I'll do it (its over 200K uuencoded/arc'ed so I don't want to be one of ten doing it :-) ) I'm glad you asked about it though, since I use it occasionally, and find that a few pieces of functionality and information are missing and was thinking of bringing up the topic myself. First of all, I can't find any information about hard-disk support under CP/M, though the TOS filesystem commands can access the hard disk. Also, there's not enough info to make changes to CP/M itself like upgrading to ZCPR. (For those of you not familiar with it, the Atari ST CP/M emulator emulates a "documented" Z80, i.e. doesn't implement the undocumented Z80 opcodes.) If anyone can help, please post or email. Gary Zaidenweber (508)256-6600 x4360 | You're only young Apollo Systems Division, Hewlett Packard Company | once, but if you UUCP: {umix|decvax|mit-eddie}!apollo!gaz | do it right, ARPA: gaz@apollo.HP.COM FAX:(508)250-4943 | once is enough!
ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) (07/16/90)
Wouldn't it be easier to emulate CP/M 68000? Such beasts surely exist since I threw out our documentation. -- Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own. ralph@laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance. ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph If all else fails, try: sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU =============================================================================== Reliable software should kill people reliably! -Andy Mickel, Pascal News #13,78
jensting@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Jens Tingleff) (07/17/90)
ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) writes: >Wouldn't it be easier to emulate CP/M 68000? Such beasts surely exist >since I threw out our documentation. Yes, but who would want to do that ? I bought an ST to get software, even though I had a technically superior (and 20 times more expensive, originally) CP/M-68k machine.. . The only reasonable thing I can think of, for the CP/M-68k machine, is to emulate TOS (only the `normal' bits, not BIOS..) in order to run compilers etc. Anyway, CP/M-68k STINKS. It does allow for disk change without reboot, but that's about the only improvement in usability over CP/M 2.0. I can't even write a terminal emulator, since the standard BIOS doesn't have status info. for the serial line(s), arrrghh. Jens Jens Tingleff MSc EE, Institute of Computer Science, Copenhagen University Snail mail: DIKU Universitetsparken 1 DK2100 KBH O "It never runs around here; it just comes crashing down" apologies to Dire Straits
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (07/18/90)
In article <1990Jul17.070025.19732@diku.dk> jensting@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Jens Tingleff) writes: > The only reasonable thing I can think of, > for the CP/M-68k machine, is to emulate TOS (only the `normal' bits, > not BIOS..) in order to run compilers etc. I though TOS was basically CP/M-68K plus GEM and a bunch of extra functions in the ROM I/O system (xios?). Have you considered porting MINIX-ST to the CP/M machine? -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.ferranti.com>
jensting@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Jens Tingleff) (07/19/90)
peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <1990Jul17.070025.19732@diku.dk> jensting@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Jens Tingleff) writes: [..] >I though TOS was basically CP/M-68K plus GEM and a bunch of extra functions >in the ROM I/O system (xios?). Yes, as far as I can see. The emulation of TOS on a CP/M-68k machine would mainly consist of remapping the traps (I'd probably have to redo some arguments - trap numbers etc) as the functionality is there. Also, all the things that you *can't* do on CP/M-68k would have to be caught.. . >Have you considered porting MINIX-ST to the CP/M machine? Yes, but I don't have the time. The only problem is that I can't (easily) get to the I/O system, since it's tied to a Z80 computer. The machine is basically a HUGE Z80 computer with a 68000 board tagged on top, communicating through shared memory (the machine is a SORD M68). It would be fun though, although my enthusiasm for the machine slumped somewhat when my experimental CP/M 80 system zeroed the disk block containing the directory on my working disk..... (those were the days...). Jens Jens Tingleff MSc EE, Institute of Computer Science, Copenhagen University Snail mail: DIKU Universitetsparken 1 DK2100 KBH O "It never runs around here; it just comes crashing down" apologies to Dire Straits
blackbox@pfunk.UUCP (Michael Kistenmacher) (07/20/90)
From article <RALPH.90Jul16121345@cresus.laas.fr>, by ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek): > >Wouldn't it be easier to emulate CP/M 68000? Such beasts surely exist >since I threw out our documentation. Hi, In the beginning of using my ST i heard, the TOS is compatible to CP/M 68K, so there should be no problems to run these programs on an ST. Bye...Mike -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | listen to the coolest ! | Michael kistenmacher / blackbox | | Music from the Galaxy ! | 2000 Hamburg 61 / Radenwisch 82 | | !!! P-Funk !!! | West Germany /++ 49 40 550 65 56 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
gaz@apollo.HP.COM (Gary Zaidenweber) (07/20/90)
From article <RALPH.90Jul16121345@cresus.laas.fr>, by ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek): > Wouldn't it be easier to emulate CP/M 68000? Such beasts surely exist > since I threw out our documentation. > -- > Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own. > ralph@laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance. > ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph > If all else fails, try: sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU > =============================================================================== > Reliable software should kill people reliably! -Andy Mickel, Pascal News #13,78 Of course you're right. In fact, it wouldn't be an emulation at all but could be a "native" operating system. However, the point of emulating CP/M-80 was to allow people who had CP/M machines to migrate to the Atari without discarding all of their CP/M-80 software. In fact, the emulator is nearly as fast as my 2.5 MHz Z80 machine and screen and disk I/O is much faster. Transferring the software is my only holdup to getting rid of the real CP/M machine. As an aside, I worked with Andy Mickel here at Apollo for a couple of years -- I can see him saying that :-) Gary Zaidenweber (508)256-6600 x4360 | You're only young Apollo Systems Division, Hewlett Packard Company | once, but if you UUCP: {umix|decvax|mit-eddie}!apollo!gaz | do it right, ARPA: gaz@apollo.HP.COM FAX:(508)250-4943 | once is enough!
jensting@rimfaxe.diku.dk (Jens Tingleff) (07/23/90)
blackbox@pfunk.UUCP (Michael Kistenmacher) writes: >From article <RALPH.90Jul16121345@cresus.laas.fr>, by ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek): [..] >In the beginning of using my ST i heard, the TOS is compatible to >CP/M 68K, so there should be no problems to run these programs >on an ST. Well, apart from the fact that the TRAP numbers are *not* identical, OK... . Anyway, who wants to use CP/M-68k programs ???? Jens Jens Tingleff MSc EE, Institute of Computer Science, Copenhagen University Snail mail: DIKU Universitetsparken 1 DK2100 KBH O "It never runs around here; it just comes crashing down" apologies to Dire Straits