Porting CP/M to Amiga?

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Then, finally, only 41 years after its release, Amigans can enjoy the legendary CP/M game Ladder, natively on Amiga.

There is Zork 1,2,3 made to work with 68k here on this page:

https://www.instructables.com/68k-mb...-Other-8080-C/

Can you possibly make an ADF with Zork ?

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

There is Zork 1,2,3 made to work with 68k here on this page:

https://www.instructables.com/68k-mb...-Other-8080-C/

Can you possibly make an ADF with Zork ?

Yes, this was very easy task. I removed some files from the original CP/M-68K boot image and added the 8080 emulator, Zork1, 2, 3, Adventure and MBASIC.
Working games ADF is the attachment.
I didn't manage to find out how to make autoexec.bat for this CP/M version (PROFILE.SUB seems is ignored), so you have to start the game by yourself, after CP/M is booted:

> com zork1.com
For Zork

> com zork2.com

> com zork3.com

> com advent.com

For Zork 2, Zork 3 and Colossal Cave Adventure.

There are interpreters for these games, but here they run natively on Amiga and CP/M. If there are difference, or if they work as intended.

Edit: You can omit the .com from the game names, i.e.
com zork1
com zork2
com zork3
com advent
will work as well...

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

Yes, this was very easy task. I removed some files from the original CP/M-68K boot image and added the 8080 emulator, Zork1, 2, 3, Adventure and MBASIC.

Thank you very much. It is nice to see this running on an amiga.

[paraj]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

If someone is interested I can create bootable CP/M adf image with the game Ladder for people to test on different configs, or make WHDLoad slave?Then, finally, only 41 years after its release, Amigans can enjoy the legendary CP/M game Ladder, natively on Amiga.

If you make a bootable ADF (like the zork one), I can update the whdload slave. I think a generic slowdown option will work, but would have to check.

For the bell sound, CP/M pauses until it has been played, right? And what is the duration roughly? If you have a particular sample you think would be appropriate, share it and I can add that as well (otherwise I'll just add some generic square wave).

[Photon]

CP/M was the first proper microcomputer DOS. There were some clones and limited implementations per-brand like Apple, Tandy, Commodore, MSX. ("DISK BASIC", just few commands added, no standardized protocols or file formats, not an OS.)

We had a bunch of networked Microbee computers early, and they did serious things like word processing, spreadsheets etc as well as (still monochrome) graphics in 512x256 IIRC. I did a Pac-man like game with some scroller in asm, and I remember a game with a frog jumping on waterlilies.

Years later they were swapped for monochrome Compis computers, then for monochrome PC computers - not much of an improvement, really. Same word processors and spreadsheet, the odd game with dire gfx and beepy sound.

I did 'Fetris' for the Compis in Pascal+asm, with a network high score list. It got played a lot at breaks, even by non-computer-interested ppl (lamers).

There should be a multitasking CP/M version, I forget the name. That could be interesting to get running

C128 did CP/M, but it was almost a decade too late. I had one with CP/M disks but sold it.

I have Spectravideo and MSX computers, actually with CP/M and 80-column card. Definitely good for serious use. You can even do a mail merge!

But it's all very clunky and old with this text only + draw graphs era. It would be interesting to learn of a modern-GUI computer or workstation based on CP/M, like Unix/Linux but on a parallel path! There should be one?

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by paraj

If you make a bootable ADF (like the zork one), I can update the whdload slave. I think a generic slowdown option will work, but would have to check.

I will try to compile one tomorrow. Still searching for a way to make autoboot script (like Autoexec.bat). For the gamers to not need to type commands before starting game bundles.

For the bell sound, CP/M pauses until it has been played, right? And what is the duration roughly? If you have a particular sample you think would be appropriate, share it and I can add that as well (otherwise I'll just add some generic square wave).

Yes, CP/M is not multitasking. In my Kay Pro Ladder longplay, there are also sounds when keys are pressed, but not sure if this is platform specific or feature of the game. The bell sound is a simple square wave with small attack at the beginning and fast decay. Attached example wav (from Kay Pro).

Once the OS/game is WHDLoaded, there are many enhancements and improvements that can be made.
For example Joystick support (emulating keys). Configurable colors - background and foreground colors are defined in the code at these lines in bios.asm:

63 COLOR0 = $180 ; Color 0
64 COLOR1 = $182 ; Color 1
182 move.w #$ccc,COLOR0(a6) ; color0: light gray
183 move.w #$000,COLOR1(a6) ; color1: black

Or even colorful copperlist backgrounds (borrowing rainbows or turrican backgrounds).

Of course these improvements can be added to the bios.asm so any game/software can benefit.

[paraj]

Yeah, I know CP/M is not multitasking, but maybe the sound would be play asynchronously. IIRC it doesn't in MS-DOS, but it's been a while

Attached is new slave that plays bell sound (at ~11025 mono on channel 0) and allows generic slowdown (whdload CPM.slave CUSTOM1=number) "number" is generic slowdown factor (number of raster lines waited each frame) that you need to tweak according to the speed of your machine. Not perfect, but maybe it's OK.

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by paraj

Yeah, I know CP/M is not multitasking, but maybe the sound would be play asynchronously. IIRC it doesn't in MS-DOS, but it's been a while

Attached is new slave that plays bell sound (at ~11025 mono on channel 0) and allows generic slowdown (whdload CPM.slave CUSTOM1=number) "number" is generic slowdown factor (number of raster lines waited each frame) that you need to tweak according to the speed of your machine. Not perfect, but maybe it's OK.

Here I attach CPM-68K Amiga Ladder ADF. I spend whole morning trying to make autoboot, but didn't succeed with AUTO.COM modifying the CCP and other software. After CP/M boot you have to type:
> ladder

to start the game. It's preconfigured for VT-52 terminal, Sound, Messages and I,J,K,L as control keys. SPACE for Jump.

SturmBIOS is claimed to support both ADM-3A and VT-52 terminal emulation, but Ladder didn't work well when selected to ADM-3A, so I left it as VT-52.

Recommended for A500 users is to set the Level to 5, because 1 is slower than usual.

Shall I compile a list of the missing features of the CP/M-68K discussed above and send them to juollila? if he has the time to implement, if he is not reading this thread already.

So far some of them can be accomplished with CP/M-68K software (patches) like the colour and the autoboot, but for the more complex ones like sound, Joystick and Copperlist, the bios.asm will need to be patched.

The current implementation is okay. With the use of the 8080 emulator I managed to get working lbr unarchiver and some other software. There is a huge library of CP/M software, now thanks to the CP/M-68K port to Amiga, it can be ran even on A1000 machines with 256 KB RAM (I have one of these at home).

One of the beast 68K machines of the early 1980-ies - the SAGE had CP/M-68? and according to the SAGE Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sage_Computer_Technology

Sage IV computers were used for the development of the Amiga prototype computer system "Lorraine". The Sage system got the nickname "Agony".

[tomcat666]

Tried the ladder and the new slave with beep - working very nicely on pistorm32 with Emucontrol ICNT=1 CCRD=0 and NOCACHE parameter for WHDLoad feels like real CP/M back in the day You do get the beep when you get killed

[rzookol]

Originally Posted by Photon

CP/M was the first proper microcomputer DOS. There were some clones and limited implementations per-brand like Apple, Tandy, Commodore, MSX. ("DISK BASIC", just few commands added, no standardized protocols or file formats, not an OS.)

We had a bunch of networked Microbee computers early, and they did serious things like word processing, spreadsheets etc as well as (still monochrome) graphics in 512x256 IIRC. I did a Pac-man like game with some scroller in asm, and I remember a game with a frog jumping on waterlilies.

Years later they were swapped for monochrome Compis computers, then for monochrome PC computers - not much of an improvement, really. Same word processors and spreadsheet, the odd game with dire gfx and beepy sound.

I did 'Fetris' for the Compis in Pascal+asm, with a network high score list. It got played a lot at breaks, even by non-computer-interested ppl (lamers).

There should be a multitasking CP/M version, I forget the name. That could be interesting to get running

C128 did CP/M, but it was almost a decade too late. I had one with CP/M disks but sold it.

I have Spectravideo and MSX computers, actually with CP/M and 80-column card. Definitely good for serious use. You can even do a mail merge!

But it's all very clunky and old with this text only + draw graphs era. It would be interesting to learn of a modern-GUI computer or workstation based on CP/M, like Unix/Linux but on a parallel path! There should be one?

Symbos has cp/m wrapper now