Ask HN: Are impressive new programs being written for CP/M? If yes, what are they? |
Ask HN: Are impressive new programs being written for CP/M? If yes, what are they? |
Since CP/M has no networking support, this also includes implementing TCP/IP inside the web server program, although I only did an extremely superficial job of this: just enough to make it look like it works under normal circumstances. (For example, it has no mechanism to retransmit dropped packets, at least partly because because my machine has no RTC so it has no idea how much time is passing).
It connects to the Internet via SLIP over a serial port to a nearby Linux machine.
It briefly hosted a little web page about my RC2014 and the web server program, but it's too much hassle to keep it running, so it's not up at the moment.
For me (when I used CP/M as a daily driver) MINCE (for MINCE is not completely EMACS :-)) was pretty damn impressive. And you have to understand that the Z80 was less powerful than an Arduino ATMega328.
So a better question is "why hasn't someone built a system out of an Arduino that can self host compilers, editors, file systems, and allows you to do code development on a serial terminal or a "PC console" like device? It is entirely doable, it won't be "quick" of course.
Mainly because Arduinos only have 2K of RAM. You could certainly connect up extra RAM chips to the digital I/O pins, but I'm not convinced there is any way to ask the ATmega328 to use this as extra memory, and even if there is you wouldn't have a lot of pins left over for doing anything else with.
I built a simple PDP-11/20 emulator (not cycle accurate) that used the Atmega chip and a couple of FRAMs for 'core'. At 16MHz it ran faster than the PDP-11/20 did when it was built, and the 11/20 ran RT-11.
Basically this is a detailed way of saying that perhaps you perceive limitations where I see opportunities :-)
[1] https://www.parallax.com/product/basic-stamp-1-interpreter-c...
[2] https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/AP-Memory/APS6404L-3SQR...
What “new” CP/M machines can be bought today?
The closest I know is this kit:
Any others that can be bought off the shelf today?
RC2014 has been quite long-lived by contrast, I guess having the various extensions/addons helps encourage people to keep tinkering with it.
I bought a single-board Z80-based system a few months back, and I guestimate there are about 50 of those specific boards in existence - but it doesn't matter too much how many of a specific board exist, so long as the CP/M archives continue to be maintained a new design isn't so hard to create.
It’s my path to $2B.
Don’t tell anyone my idea.
It's just hobbyists now. One hacker ported his game to a Kaypro under CP/M a couple years ago: http://www.chrisfenton.com/dd9-kaypro-edition/
Much of the focus is on porting CP/M to whatever new or old Z80 system someone has built or found. Speaking of which... CP/Mish is an attempt to bring all the free software CP/M tools together. It is to CP/M as Linux is to UNIX, or FreeDOS is to MS-DOS. A mostly complete, improved, libre reimplementation: https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish
RunCPM is a CP/M Z80 virtual machine under modern OSes for development etc. https://github.com/MockbaTheBorg/RunCPM
In terms of recent new programs, here are some pointers if you wanted to write something yourself:
Also written by the maintainer of the CP/Mish project (and not CP/M specific) is Cowgol. Alpha quality. But it's a self-hosted Pascal/Ada-like language with compiler. Runs on 8-bit systems, at least theoretically. It is written, of course, entirely in Cowgol: https://github.com/davidgiven/cowgol
Millfork is another new language which targets CP/M systems, among others. It's a whole-program optimizing cross-compiler for a language somewhat lower level than C, with properties that make it very nice to compile for 8-bit systems like no recursion, and no automatic promotion to 16-bit integers in type handling: https://github.com/KarolS/millfork
There's some work on a Z80 target for FreePascal. I don't think there's CP/M specific support, so there's a project idea: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Z80
SDCC supports the platform with C surprisingly well. I wouldn't call it rock-solid but compared to the above toys it is an industrial quality compiler for the Z80. In fact, C seems to be the most common actual language for hobbyist and the little remaining serious Z80 development, probably ahead of assembly. If it just reads and writes the terminal and can fit in about 60 KB, then a port is probably straightforward.
Having said that, I've written a ton of software on CP/M and enjoyed doing it - at the time. I wouldn't want to do it now.
Are you time traveling?
That would be official only later...