This page describes what was contained in a “standard” vanilla CP/M 2.2 system as distributed by Digital Research. This information is cited from the following book:
The Programmer’s CP/M Handbook.
by Andy Johnson-Laird. Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1983.
ISBN 0-88134-119-3.
System Diskette (IBM 3740 8″ SS/SD Floppy Diskette)
The disk format was single-sided, single-density, and had 73 tracks with 26 sectors storing 128 bytes per sector. The total capacity was 237.25 KB.
You can get the files below from The Unofficial CP/M Web site. Look in Digital Research Binary Files under Operating Systems where you can find CP/M 2.2 BINARY.
| Filename | Description |
|---|---|
| ASM.COM | The CP/M assembler. |
| BIOS.ASM | A source code file containing a sample BIOS for the Intel Microcomputer Development System (MDS). Unless you have the MDS, this file is useful only as an example of a BIOS. |
| CBIOS.ASM | Another source code file for a BIOS. This one is skeletal: There are gaps so that you can insert code for your computer. |
| DDT.COM | The Dynamic Debugging Tool program. |
| DEBLOCK.ASM | A source code file that you will need to use in the BIOS if your computer uses sector sizes other than 128 bytes. It is an example of how to block and deblock 128-byte sectors to and from the sector size you need. |
| DISKDEF.LIB | A library of source text that you will use if you have a copy of Digital Research’s advanced assembler, MAC. |
| DUMP.ASM | The source for an example program. DUMP reads a CP/M disk file and displays it in hexadecimal for on the console. |
| DUMP.COM | The actual executable program derived from DUMP.ASM. |
| ED.COM | The source file editor. |
| LOAD.COM | A program that takes the machine code file output by the assembler, ASM, and creates another file with the data rearranged so that you can execute the program by just typing its name on the keyboard. |
| MOVCPM.COM* | A program that creates versions of CP/M for different memory sizes. |
| PIP.COM | A program for copying information from one place to another (PIP is short for Peripheral Interchange Program). |
| STAT.COM | A program that displays statistics about the CP/M and other information that you have stored on disks. |
| SUBMIT.COM | A program that you use to enter CP/M commands automatically. It helps you avoid repeated typing of long command sequences. |
| SYSGEN.COM | A program that writes CP/M onto diskettes. |
| XSUB.COM | An extended version of the SUBMIT program. The files named previously fall into two groups: One group is used only to rebuild CP/M, while the other set is general-purpose programming tools. |
* MOVCPM.COM must be tailor-made for the specific system. Usually, this file doesn’t work on other systems than what it was compiled for originally, so don’t expect it to run on your system.
Documentation
All documentation links below refer to The Unofficial CP/M Web site: http://www.cpm.z80.de/
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| An Introduction to CP/M Features and Facilities | This is a brief description of CP/M and the utility programs you will find on the diskette. It describes only CP/M version 1.4. |
| CP/M2.0 User’s Guide | Digital Research wrote this manual to describe the new features of CP/M 2.0 and the extensions made to existing CP/M 1.4 features. |
| ED: A Context Editor for the CP/M Disk System | By today’s standards, ED is a primitive line editor, but you can still use it to make changes to files containing ASCII text, such as the BIOS source code. |
| CP/M Assembler (ASM) | ASM is a simple but fast assembler that can be used to translate the BIOS source code on the diskette into machine code. Since ASM is only a bare-bones assembler, many programmers now use its successor, MAC (also from Digital Research). |
| CP/M Dynamic Debugging Tool (DDT) | DDT is an extremely useful program that allows you to load programs in machine code form and then test them, executing the program either one machine instruction at a time or stopping only when the CPU reaches a specific point in the program. |
| CP/M Alteration Guide – v1.4 – v2.0 | There are two manuals with this title, one for CP/M version 1.4 and the other for 2.0. Both manuals describe, somewhat cryptically, how to modify CP/M. |
| CP/M Interface Guide – v1.4 . v2.0 | Again, there are two versions, 1.4 and 2.0. These manuals tell you how to write programs that communicate directly with CP/M. |
