Other computers-including some lower-priced home machines-featured CP/M capability as an add-on option, although it often required extra hardware to make it possible to run. Popular CP/M computer vendors included Cromemco, Kaypro, Amstrad, Osborne, Vector Graphic, Televideo, Visual, and Zenith Data Systems.
CP/M shipped as the default OS for hundreds of different computer models of all types and sizes. VisualĪlmost all computers using the industry-standard S100 bus that used an 8080 or Z80 were capable of running CP/M. The 1983 Visual 1050 ran an enhanced version of CP/M. Most computers running CP/M included an 8-bit Intel 8080 or a Zilog Z80 processor, although Digital Research later released a 16-bit version of CP/M for Intel 8086 machines called CP/M-86. Other programs, such as AutoCAD and Turbo Pascal, originated on CP/M, and later became more successful after being ported to MS-DOS later. Popular applications for CP/M included WordStar (a word processor), SuperCalc (a spreadsheet application), and dBase (for databases). This meant that CP/M applications were not necessarily tied to the particular hardware they ran on and could be more easily translated between PCs from different vendors.
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One of CP/M’s key breakthroughs was in handling basic input and output tasks with the underlying hardware, leaving application software to interface mostly with the OS itself. When you were done, you’d either reboot the machine or exit back to the CP/M prompt. (This would copy all of the BASIC files from drive “B:” over to drive “A:”.) To run a program, you’d type the program name and hit enter. You performed file operations using simple commands such as “PIP” (for copying files) by typing PIP A:=B:*.BAS and hitting Enter. Benj EdwardsĬP/M was a console-based operating system, which means that you interacted with it using a keyboard, typing in commands at a prompt. CP/M and BASIC-80 running on a Kaypro II computer. Its initials stood for “Control Program/Monitor” at first, but Digital Research changed it to the more friendly “Control Program for Microcomputers” later.Īs the price of microcomputers dropped rapidly in the mid-late 1970s, CP/M, paired with the Z80 CPU, became a de-facto standard platform that was popular among small business computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. CP/M was a text-based operating system created by American programmer Gary Kildall of Digital Research in 1974.