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Last edit: 2002-05-24 MPAUL
Digital Research Personal CP/M-86 1.0/5b (1985)
===============================================
for
===
Siemens Simatic S5 / PG685
==========================
Summary
-------
This archive represents a German issue of Digital Research's
Personal CP/M-86 1.0/5b for the Siemens Simatic S5 programming
device PG685.
This release of PCP/M-86 is dated 1985-10-09 (or 1985-09-10?),
and contains Digital Research copyright strings going back to
1981, 1982, and for the most part 1983.
Many of the .CMD files contain "CP/M-86 Plus" strings, leading
to the assumption that Personal CP/M-86 1.x and 2.x represent
nothing but this rumored product CP/M-86 Plus or that they are
at least very close relatives, with Personal CP/M-86 being derived
from CP/M-86 Plus. There are also hints that the single-user
Personal CP/M-86 1.x and 2.x issues in some way correspond with
the multi-user Concurrent CP/M-86 3.1.
License
-------
Since 1999-07, Lineo, Inc., Utah, USA, is the copyright owner of all
original Digital Research CP/M operating system technology by way of
Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. (since mid 1998), Caldera, Inc. (since
1996-07), Novell, Inc. (since 1991-07) and Digital Research, Inc.
On 2001-10-19, Lineo's (then-times) Chairman and CEO Bryan Sparks
issued a public CP/M distribution and usage license as detailed
in the file LICENSE.TXT accompaning this distribution archive.
This historic issue of CP/M is expressively made available "AS IS"
under the terms of this license, and without warranties or support
of any kind. Use the files and information solely at your own risk.
However, while the meaning is pretty clear in "human language",
the actual wording is in another sense so vague that I suggest you
still better check with Lineo in case you plan to utilize this
stuff for anything beyond the sole purpose of studying the CP/M
and DOS history or personal non-commercial use.
(Disclaimer: I am no spokesperson of Lineo, and I have no direct
affiliation with Lineo at the time of this writing.)
Features
--------
According to the documentation on the disk, this issue of PCP/M-86
supports one 96 tpi floppy disk drive and one hard disk drive (at
least up to 85 Mb), apparently up to 512 Kb RAM, and up to three
background processes.
It can read and write these floppy formats:
PG695 / PC16-11 : 80 track floppies formatted under CCP/M-86 version 2.0/3
or CCP/M-86 version 3.1/1 or PCP/M-86 version 1.0/x
It can read, but not write these formats:
PG675 : 40 track floppies formatted under CP/M-86 version 1.1/2
and PCP/M-86 version 1.0/x
IBM-PC XT : 40 track floppies formatted under CP/M-86 since
version 1.1, CCP/M-86 all versions if written
with single- or dual-sided CP/M formats.
I have no idea what kind of machine this "Siemens Simatic S5
Programmierger<65>t PG685" was, but I assume it was some sort of
programmable industrial control. It must have been small enough
to be portable (whatever this means). The documentation mentions
an optional external graphics monitor "BMG" in addition to
the internal display. The video was capable of both, text
and graphics mode and the documentation mentions GSX-86.
Documentation
-------------
All this information provided here was leaked from reading the READ.ME
file on the floppy disk and some examination of the binaries.
Apparently there was a small German Siemens publication:
"Simatic S5 - Personal CP/M-86 Betriebssystem - Tabellenheft",
93 pages, Order No. C79000-B8500-C352-01
And there was a comprehensive manual for Personal CP/M-86 as well,
but I have no further info about it, unfortunately.
File versions
-------------
File name: File size: CRC: Date strings: Version strings:
BACK.CMD 15.232 EDBF 1983-11-16
CCP.CMD 7.168 E06F 1983-11-11
DATE.CMD 3.840 F1EC 1983-11-16
DDT86.CMD 14.336 9DB9 1981 1.2
DEVICE.CMD 19.840 FEF9 1983-11-16
DIR.CMD 11.648 4984 1983-11-16
DSKMAINT.CMD 31.104 91BC 1983-01-26,"09.10.1985" 2.3 for PG685 on
PCP/M-86 1.0
or CCP/M-86 3.1 with
CCP/M-86 XIOS 3.1
DUMP86.CMD 2.944 4EAF 1983-10-03 3.0,3.1
ED.CMD 9.728 E763 1983-11-16
ERASE.CMD 3.968 DC89 1983-11-16
EXTERN.CMD 640 9BC7 N/A
GENRSX.CMD 18.688 FD67 1983-10-04,1983-11-16
GET.CMD 9.088 9E70 1983-11-16
GETRSX.RSX 3.328 3A82 N/A
HDPARK.CMD 3.328 257C N/A 1.0 for PG685
HDPARTY.CMD 30.336 6713 1983-01-26 2.5/3 on PCP/M-86 1.0
or CCP/M-86 3.1
HELP.CMD 7.680 DBC2 1983-11-16 1.1
HELP.HLP 54.016 4448 (1982-08-14)
INITDIR.CMD 35.840 BEA9 N/A
INTERN.CMD 640 1BC7 N/A
PATCH86.CMD 3.328 0A90 1983-10-03 3.1
PCPM.SYS 47.488 3166 1983-11-11,1983-11-16
PIP.CMD 9.472 845E 1983-11-16,1983-09-02 3.1
PUT.CMD 8.832 1E84 1983-11-16
PUTRSX.RSX 3.584 8C7B N/A
READ.ME 4.480 6ABF N/A
RENAME.CMD 3.200 15D1 1983-11-16
SET.CMD 9.344 737C 1982,1983-11-16
SETDEF.CMD 5.120 D248 1983-11-16
SHOW.CMD 8.704 AFDE 1983-11-16
STOP.CMD 2.304 C8C4 1983-11-16
SUBMIT.CMD 11.008 97A5 1983-11-16
TYPE.CMD 4.096 35A4 1983-11-16
The CRC checksums were calculated with DR-DOS XDIR /C.
The date strings found in the binaries do not necessarily match with
the file date stamps (which might be stored on the PCP/M-86 floppy image -
I simply don't know, as Sydex 22DISK has no options to read them).
To avoid further confusion all dates were converted to the international
date format as per ISO 8601 ("ccyy-mm-dd") unless it was not possible
for me to track down the actual date due to the ambiguity between the
US ("mmddccyy") and the (old) European date format ("ddmmccyy"), which
were for sure both used on the floppy. The uncertain date is given in
quotes. (Please note that both separators '/' and '.' are in use for
both the US and the European format, only the ISO 8601 format makes
the '-' mandantory in case a separator is used.)
A little attempt in Personal CP/M-86 geneology
----------------------------------------------
Within this file, PCP/M-86 and Personal CP/M-86 are used as synonyms,
just like CCP/M-86 is used as an abbreviation to Concurrent CP/M-86.
This issue of PCP/M-86 1.0/5b contains these date stamps:
"01/26/83" -> 1983-01-26
"09/02/83" -> 1983-09-02
"031083" -> 1983-10-03
"10/4/83" -> 1983-10-04
"111183" -> 1983-11-11
"11/16/83" and "161183" -> 1983-11-16
"09.10.85" -> 1985-10-09? (probably in European format)
Most probably the date 1982-08-14 was also some special date in the
CP/M-86 history since the HELP DATE text uses this date as an example.
Mentionings of a Digital Research product named CP/M-86 Plus can
be found in Usenet discussions like news:comp.os.cpm and various
private discussions, as well as in the literature, for example:
Herwig Feichtinger "Arbeitsbuch Mikrocomputer", 2nd edition, 1987,
Franzis Verlag, ISBN 3-7723-8022-0 (presumably the first edition
was published in 1986 or earlier):
On page 466 the author mentions that CP/M-86 would featurewise
correspond with CP/M(-80) 2.2, while a newer CP/M(-80) 3.0 alias
CP/M Plus existed for the 8080/8085/Z80 CPU family, but not for
the x86 family. He states that while the book went to press
(1st or 2nd edition?), Digital Research was working on a new
product named CP/M-86 Plus which would overcome most of the
limitations of a CP/M(-80) 2.2 style implementation, presumably
raising the compatibility level to a 3.0 implementation (just
like for the CP/M-80 series).
However, so far (2002) noone seems to have found an "offical"
copy of CP/M-86 Plus, leading to the assumption that Personal
CP/M-86 1.x and 2.x, which contain many "CP/M-86 Plus" strings
in the binaries, either are in fact CP/M-86 Plus or at least
a further derivation of it.
The author also mentions that Concurrent CP/M-86 (CCP/M) was
developed out of CP/M-86 (not as I assumed the other way around),
and that CCP/M-86 would support up to four processes (what a
coincidence with Personal CP/M-86, which supports three background
processes, while MP/M-86 supports many more!), but that these
processes can be utilized by a single user as well as getting
assigned to different users on up to four serial terminals (not
possible with Personal CP/M-86). He further states that CCP/M-86
supports multiple screen windows, and that the system files
XIOS.SYS, CCP/M.SYS and BDOSPC.COM together would consume 140 Kb.
Unfortunately he does not mention the exact CCP/M-86 version number
he is talking about in his book.
Taking into account that Personal CP/M-86 1.0/5b DSKMAINT.CMD
2.3 contains strings that it requires "Personal CP/M 1.0" or
"Concurrent CP/M 3.1" and "Concurrent CP/M XIOS 3.1",
Personal CP/M-86 1.x looks much like some kind of a single-user
edition of Concurrent CP/M-86 3.1 to me... (If CP/M-86 Plus
actually existed, it could have been a single user version
of CCP/M-86 3.0 then, but this is only guesswork on my part.)
More interesting is that he states CCP/M-86 3.1 would be able
to emulate MS-DOS and that it would automatically determine the
floppy disk format (CP/M or DOS), and that CCP/M-86 3.1 would
be 30% faster than MS-DOS 1.0 when writing to floppy disks,
but that CCP/M-86 3.1 would only support the old MS-DOS 1.0
8 sectors/track floppies, not the newer 9 sectors/track floppies
introduced with MS-DOS 2.0+, and that support for sub-directories
was still lacking as well.
Well, neither Personal CP/M-86 1.0/5b nor 2.1/1 do support
any kind of DOS emulation, and I cannot make any statement
in regard to CCP/M-86 3.1 (which I have never seen), but knowing
that Digital Research's successor DOS Plus 1.2 (as, for example,
found on the Amstrad PC1512 and - judging from its internal
strings "CPCDOS 4.1" - corresponding with Concurrent PC-DOS 4.1)
or DOS Plus 2.1 (as used on the Acorn BBC Master 512) do both
come with a MS-DOS 2.11 emulation layer, there is some coincidence
here as well.
The only contradiction is the version number 3.1 or 4.1;
if CCP/M-86 3.1 already supported an early form of DOS emulation,
than PCP/M-86 1.x is *less* than a single-user edition of CCP/M-86 3.1.
On the other hand, it could well be, that, what Herwig Feichtinger
still called CCP/M-86, was already marketted as Concurrent PC-DOS 3.1
(I know that at least a Concurrent PC-DOS 3.2 existed), so there
is sort of coincidence again... Another unverified little theory is
that Concurrent CP/M-86 3.x and Concurrent PC-DOS 3.x were in fact
two flavours of basically the same product, with the latter having
added an (optional) DOS emulation layer. Does someone know for sure?
If you have corrections, additions, or can shed some better light on
these earliest pre-decessors of the later single user DR DOS and
Multiuser DOS families (with their latest representants at the time
of this writing being Lineo DR-DOS 7.03 and OEM DR-DOS 7.05 and
ITERA/IMS REAL/32 7.93 and ITERA/IMS REAL NG now), I would very
much appreciate your feedback.
Thanks and Enjoy!
Matthias Paul <mpaul@drdos.org>
EOF