Advanced CP/M Part One by Ron Collins WHAT IS CP/M? I suppose this is a very basic question many who have never used CP/M might have. As a simple yet accurate answer, let's go to the basics. When you look at your computer, no matter what the brand or design, it's easy to forget that it's really just a glorified calculator. To be sure, there have been a lot of advancements made to it since the days of the abacus, but a device to perform calculations is all that it is.

Advanced CP/M Part Two by Ron Collins This month we will discuss the built-in or Resident commands. These are commands that Digital Research included in the operating system and are available just by typing in the command or pressing a preprogrammed SmartKey. These commands are easily recognizable and most are self explanatory.

Advanced CP/M Part Three by Ron Collins The fifth resident command is SAVE and is assigned to SmartKEY V. This command does just what the name would imply. It saves a file stored in memory to a disk or data pack. You won't get much use from the SAVE command until you get into editing programs. DDT.COM, the debugger program on your master CP/M disk or data pack has the ability to load any of the .COM files on your disk, etc. into memory. Once there, you can alter program code any way you like. The changes are only in memory, though, so your main program is safe from any damage.

Advanced CP/M Part Four by Ron Collins CP/M looks at every command no matter what case they are in when you type them as upper case. If you type in lower case, CP/M will translate it to upper case every time. The result is that a file name can only exist in one form, upper case, at one time. A program called HELLO could only be present once. If you tried to save a new program to the same disk and user area called hEllo, a function of CP/M would delete the original and place your new file in the same location!

Advanced CP/M Part Five by Ron Collins For part two of my CP/M articles, James Poulin asked me to write about my patches to various CP/M programs. Patches to make them ADAM compatible programs. I have, by trial and error, been able to install a wide variety of software on my home ADAM system.The patches involve such things as the setting of proper screen codes, altering drive...

Advanced CP/M Part Six by Ron Collins First of all, there must be a way to erase what is already on the screen before you can put something new on it. Next, you must have a way of putting the cursor at the top left corner of that screen so that anything new will start at the screen's beginning. After that, you need a way to type a line and have the cursor move down one line for the next typed line. Without this, you will end up typing over the previous line over and over again.

Advanced CP/M Part Seven by Ron Collins When you type "Q" to Quit, the new terminal escape codes will be written into the main program file for you. You've just finished your first program installation! Go ahead and try to boot the new program and see how it looks. If it's "not quite right", you now know how to go back in and try a different emulation.

Advanced CP/M Part Eight by Ron Collins .Continued from last month..... In the case of this two drive system, you would change the text I listed above from this: