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from the where-are-the-redacted-chapters-of-Gary's-posthumous-memoir-at dept.
The Eerie Linux blog (also in Gemini) has a longer post about how to actually get started using CP/M, the Control Program for Microcomputers.
This article is just what the headline promises: an introduction to the CP/M operating system. No previous knowledge of 1970s and early ’80s operating systems is required. However, some familiarity with Linux or a BSD-style operating system is assumed, as the setup process suggested here involves using a package manager and command-line tools. But why explore CP/M in the 2020s? There are (at least) two good reasons: 1) historical education 2) gaining a better understanding of how computers actually work.
Last year I wrote two articles about CP/M after having taken a first look at it:
A journey into the 8-Bit microcomputing past: Exploring the CP/M operating system – part 1
A journey into the 8-Bit microcomputing past: Exploring the CP/M operating system – part 2These were written with a focus on the first reason; I had (partially) read the manuals and tried out a few commands in an emulator (as well as done a little bit of research). I wrote an outsider’s look at CP/M and covered the various versions that were released and some of their notable features.
This article is different. It’s for readers who want to get started with CP/M themselves. Expect a practical introduction to get familiar enough with the platform to be able to explore a wealth of historic software, often enough ground-breaking and influential.
CP/M was of great importance back during the 8-bit microcomputer era. It was ubiquitous in small businesses and government offices for a while. It ran on the Zilog Z80 and Intel 8080 hardware architectures. MicroPro International's WordStar and Ashton Tate's dBase II were among the killer apps of the era. Networking was by sneakernet or, maybe, if your cable smithing skills were up to it, by null modem.
Previously:
(2024) Complete WordStar 7.0 Archive
(2024) End of an Era: End-Of-Life for the Venerable Zilog Z80
(2024) Intel 8080 Emulator. 19th IOCCC. Best of Show.
(2022) Z80—The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive
(2016) Portion of Gary Kildall's Memoir Made Public
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday August 30 2025, @02:48PM
For the "historical education" I'd make an analogy with archeology that you can learn a lot from old tech if you'll bother to put in the time. Old lessons learned can sometimes be figured out a lot faster than re-learning from the start in the present day.
Education in general, not historical education. Its small enough an individual can realistically understand how all the parts work together and this is of educational value. Its easier or more realistic to teach someone everything about a small system rather than a huge system like "all of linux" or "all of windows" or "all of osx".
Its a fun puzzle. If you want a picture of dogs playing poker, its a hell of a lot easier to find one and download it from the internet or order a beautiful high res poster online, than to put together a 1000 piece puzzle. Making an old system do something interesting is likewise a puzzle with a lot of small, satisfying parts.
There are different ways to "retrocompute". This article is about being a tourist with an experienced tour guide. This leads to
Another way to retrocompute is to "do something" with it. Go solve fizzbuzz in Turbo Pascal for CP/M or go solve some Project Euler challenges using MS FORTRAN-80 (which was a thing, and the 80 IIRC was the copyright date, it was NOT a F77 god help you IIRC it was a FORTRAN-IV like using a PDP-8 in the mid 60s two decades earlier) IIRC F-80 was only restored and make operational again around 2020 so this is semi-cutting-edge in 2025. For a few decades if I felt like running F-IV I "had to" use a PDP-8 emulator. Write software using overlays (a lost art since at least Y2K... I'd explain it to noobs by saying something like what if you had a system without VM but VERY manually implemented virtual memory in your own program, kind of...)
There are also people who get into end-user software instead of small time sysadmin stuff. Some "applications" were pretty interesting. Editor/word processors, spell checkers operating in ridiculously limited memory, very early database stuff was cool. Early BBSes and related terminal programs (I didn't get into this until 1984 or so, which is a bit after the CP/M in the article).
Another fertile field of experiment is retrocomputing people like small time first time user sysadmin stuff. Now try something exotic like setting up an in-memory print buffer or using multi-user CP/M 3 or that mystifying network/LAN/server system for CP/M that I never really got into but knew about. Go a little further than typing "DIR", interesting as that might be for total noobs, were not all total noobs forever and there's a lack of "advanced" content.