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CP/M for PS/2 Model 60?

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MykeLawson

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Anyone familiar with a version of CP/M that can be installed on an IBM PS/2 Mod 60? Something that can utilize either MFM or ESDI drives? And how about programs to run on it as well? Just curious. Otherwise, the alternatives are either some Unix-link flavor, or the old standby DOS. Hey, just a thought.
 
Xenix-286 + a DOS partition for compatibility is an option. By the time the model 60 was out CP/M had been dead for a while.
 
You could probably slap a version of DR’s Concurrent DOS on there that still has support for CP/M-86 programs and enjoy access to the library of, uhm, I dunno, dozens? of programs that enables?
 
That may actually be a better choice than Xenix. I think today the easiest to find applications for Xenix you can count with one hand.
 
I have this extremely vague memory of reading something that said that remnants of CP/M-86 lingered in DR-DOS even through the OpenDOS era, but I have no idea when/if the CP/M API was explicitly stripped out. If you can actually find some CP/M-86 software to play with it definitely might be an interesting rabbit hole to go down seeing what programs will work on what versions.

Also remember there was this drama-filled story about the evolution of Concurrent CP/M, IE, that DR had this grand plan to implement a scheme that would let them run real-mode software in the 286's protected mode, but that plan went south when code they wrote that worked on early revisions of the 286 chip were broken by later revs? Of course the PS/2s didn't come out until 1987, so there's the question of whether any "interesting" version of Concurrent DOS runs on it. So... yeah, sure, if you're looking for a can of worms to open this could be a good one.
 
I know that Concurrent DOS made it into IBM 4680's core and remained in active development until it was replaced with 4690 in 1993. That transitioned to FlexOS which likewise made its way into 4690, whose initial release at the very least continued to support the 286 until around 1995.
 
DRI changed names when they changed versions of its mutitasking/multiuser OS:

* MP/M was the original name up to version 2.x
* Concurrent CP/M and Concurrent DOS (when they added MS-DOS compatibility) were versions 3.x and beyond up to version 6.x (DRI added the XM suffix when Concurrent DOS 386 was released)
* Concurrent DOS 386 has 3 releases with this name
* Multiuser DOS is version 5.x and beyond, up to version 7.x, and is actually the fourth version of Concurrent DOS 386. The 7.x versions where developed by DRI VARs after Novell buyout since Novell has no interest in the product. Real/32 is another incarcanation of Multiuser DOS 7

All of them are able to run CP/M-86 programs.
 
As to the 286 version of "Concurrent", and the IBM 4680 / 4690 base, that was what was eventually named FlexOS. It was initially named Concurrent DOS-286, and the early versions (1.3, 1.42) can now be found on bitsavers, together with an '386 version of 1.40 & 1.42. A 68k port of an earlier version (1.20) named CDOS-68k can be found on Gaby's site.

The '286 versions seem to include the hinted at "MS-DOS Front End", and the 68k version apparently contains a "CP/M-68k Front End".

However for all of these, I'd suggest they have no direct code connection with Concurrent CP/M-86, merely specifications and related concepts, together with similarities in some of the core structures. The FlexOS I used commercially was written in C, with bits of assembly support logic. I was still using FlexOS 2.32 in '97 until I changed employer.

At most, I'd suggest that the MS-DOS FE may be related to the CCP/M-86 PCMODE component, and similarly the CP/M-68k FE may well be the CP/M-68k C source adjusted and recompiled. However I'd also suggest that the majority of the rest of the system is new code.

I do recall that DREDIX came with FlexOS 2.x, and that there is C source for it in some of the older Concurrent DOS collections, but the OS kernel proper strikes me as almost (if not all) new C code. In FlexOS 2.x the DOS FE only existed in the 386 version, building upon the V86 mode.

It would certainly be interesting to find more details about the early proposed MP/M-286 which is mentioned in some magazine articles. Was that something which actually started using the CCP/M-86 code, or was it simply an early marketing name for the FlexOS development?
 
I think about the only program I would want would be a BASIC interpreter. There probably is, I just haven't looked much. On my ToDo list though.....
 
CBASIC-86 is out there. Plus there are CP/M-86 versions of Forth, Lisp, and Pascal. Not exactly a wide selection but more native software than many of the less successful OSes.

There was an entire cottage industry of software designed to run CP/M-80 programs under CP/M-86. This is one way to keep DOS off the system.
 
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