SAGE@LL.ARPA (11/23/88)
Gratien D'haese wrote: >> Has anyone out there ever succeeded to install a BDOS replacement, of any >> kind, for the standard BDOS of Apple CP/M. I'm thinking of e.g. P2DOS, >> ZRDOS, and maybe many other products available as public domain. I am not an expert on Apple CP/M, but it is my understanding that a great many people have quite successfully installed all kinds of replacement operating system components. I know for a fact that this is true of the Apple PCPI system. No one has yet informed me of any Apple CP/M board on which our new NZ-COM (for CP/M-2.2) and Z3PLUS (for CP/M-Plus) versions of Z-System do not run (and there are a good number of Apple customers). They install automatically, so anyone with an Apple CP/M computer should be able to use them, even if they do not know anything about the intricacies of the operating system. There is no need to assemble or patch anything; they run like an application program. Most of the NZ-COM configuration is accomplished with a menu program. The finer points in NZ-COM and all the customization (if needed) in Z3PLUS are handled by editing a simple text file. NZ-COM already includes the ZRDOS replacement disk operating system and the ZCPR34 command processor replacement. ZSDOS/ZDDOS, spectacular new DOS replacements that are about to be released (manuals are at the printer now), can also be installed into an NZ-COM system (or even a CP/M system). They bring the DOS functionality to a level corresponding to ZCPR3. Features are run-time configurable. DateStamping has been designed in. With ZDDOS it is handled completely within the DOS; ZSDOS requires a small external module. The date stamping can be either Plu*Perfect style or CP/M-Plus (P2DOS) style OR BOTH SIMULTANEOUSLY! Plu*Perfect style public files are supported, and ZSDOS even has a DOS search path like the command search path of ZCPR3. Access modes (read-only or read/write) to files located indirectly are controlled dynamically using the utility ZSCONFIG. Automatic disk logging, of course! Excellent error messages that report not only the nature of the error but the name of the file involved, if any. So, there is no reason for Apple CP/M users not to take advantage of the advanced CP/M-compatible operating systems.