CPM Programmes

Once you've managed to get download.com onto one of your CP/M disks you'll need to start adding applications. There are a number of resources on the net that provide archives of CP/M applications. I've also added a couple of tools specific to this system.

MOUNT.COM

ZIOS supports 511 virtual 4MB disks on a 2GB SDCard. By default the first 4 virtual disks are mapped to the first 4 logical drives. If you boot CP/M via the bos ZLoader command the system will automatically mount the disk from which CP/M Is loaded to the first logical drive and will appear as A: within CP/M.

Once in CP/M, MOUNT.COM provides a means of mounting any of the virtual drives into any of the 4 logical drives my CP/M BIOS supports (drives A-D). Syntax:

MOUNT [drv]=[card]:[disk]

Where:

• drv is the logical drive onto which the disk is to be mounted. A: thru D:
• card is the SDCard hosting the virtual disk. This is either sd0 or sd1.
• disk is the logical volume number. On a 2GB SDCard this is a decimal number between 1 and 511. (disk 0 is reserved)

With no parameters MOUNT lists the current mounted drives.

FORMAT.COM

A simple disk formatter for CP/M disks. This only works with the 4MB SDCard logical drives.

Syntax:

FORMAT drv

The drive must be specified and is in the form A: thru D:

Use MOUNT to mount a new drive then FORMAT to make it ready to be used by CP/M

DSTATS.COM

ZIOS keeps some basic SDCard usage stats. This command will write the current values to the output terminal. The stats kept are:

• Reads - number of actual 512 byte SDCard sector reads
• Writes - number of actual 512 byte SDCard sector writes
• Cache Hits - number of 512 byte reads or writes that were avoided because the requested page is in the ZIOS cache.
• Clean writes - CP/M BIOS writes include a flag to indicate 'first writes to a clean sector'. If this flag is set then the SDCard sector does not need to be first read before the 128 byte CP/M data can be written.

Specifying DSTATS CLEAR will reset the stats to zeroes. Note that CLEAR must be in uppercase.

ZLOADER.COM

Exit CP/M and return control to ZLoader.

There are no parameters.

DOWNLOAD.COM

A slightly modified version of Grant Searle's CP/M hex download programme. I've reformatted the code to make it more understandable to me and made a few tweaks.

This programme accepts a specifically formatted sequence of hex data, converts that hex data to binary and creates a file containing that data. The programme isn't concerned with the content of the file, which can be executable or anything else (text, database etc).

Third party sources

The following resources are useful sources of CP/M native applications:

• RetroBrew Computers - list of all the basic applications to get you going.
• RomWBW also includes the core commands along with what I think is an IDE

CP/M CCP replacements

Noting these here as bookmarks for me to take a later look at.

• ZCPR
• Z80CCP
• XCCP replacement command processor
• EPEX Environment Extension - alternative to XCCP that provides batch processing, aliases, psuedo directories and search paths.
• CP/Mish - replaces CPP and BDOS. Originally envisioned as an open source equivalent to CP/M before the status of CP/M was clear.
• Microshell 2 - a unix-like CCP replacement that allows file redirection and has a fairly clunky command line editor.