CP/M forty years on – what it was, and why it still matters (2021)

kevinboone.me

43 pointsAlexeyBrin4 comments

Note this article is from 2021 (it goes hard on COVID dooming near the end).

Good explanation on what an OS is and how is useful to programmers, though.

Readers: It does not "go hard on COVID dooming". This is just a weird take on the way it was actually mentioned.

It was a long time ago, but I vaguely recall using a standard graphics extension on CP/M. It had a lot of gray scale fill patterns and could draw geometric shapes on a bitmapped display. I was using a z80 system on green monochrome display, and enjoyed watching the graphics slowly plotted onto the display.

That sounds a lot like the PCW8256 or 8512 and locomotive's CP/M Plus and the few dozen apps/games that supported it.

If so it wasn't a 'standard' per se; but it was common across the Spectrum +3, the PCWs, and the Amstrad 664/6128.

There may have also been some software to enable such software to also work on the Tatung Einstein and the Enterprise Flan (which didn't 'technically' run CP/M at all, but IS-DOS was compatible enough to run most CP/M software).

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