★ LITTÉRATURE ★ ENGLISH ★ CP/M PLUS USERS PROGRAMMERS AND SYSTEM GUIDES ★ |
| CP/M Plus Users Programmers and System Guides | Littérature English |
Welcome to the world of microcomputers opened to you by your eight-bit microprocessor. Welcome also to the world of application software accessible with your Digital Research CP/M Plus™ operating system, also called CP/M® 3. Digital Research designed CP/M 3 especially for the 8080, 8085, Z80® or equivalent microprocessor that is the heart of your computer. What CP/M 3 Does For You CP/M 3 manages and supervises your computer's resources, including memory and disk storage, the console (screen and keyboard), printer, and communications devices. It also manages information stored magnetically on disks by grouping this information into files of programs or data. CP/M 3 can copy files from a disk to your computer's memory, or to a peripheral device such as a printer. To do this, CP/M 3 places various programs in memory and executes them in response to commands you enter at your console. Once in memory, a program executes through a set of steps that instruct your computer to perform a certain task. You can use CP/M 3 to create your own programs, or you can choose from the wide variety of CP/M 3 application programs that entertain you, educate you, and help you solve commercial and scientific problems. What You Need to Run CP/M 3 on Your Computer Digital Research provides two kinds of CP/M 3 systems: banked and nonbanked. Your computer dealer can tell you if you have a banked or nonbanked system. The banked system requires more memory, but in turn provides more memory space for application programs. The banked version also has additional enhancements that are noted in the text. The minimum hardware requirement for both versions of CP/M 3 is a computer based on an 8080, 8085, or equivalent microprocessor, a console device (generally a keyboard and display device such as a CRT screen), and at least one floppy disk drive. To use all the capabilities of CP/M 3, you should have two disk drives. At least one should be a single density floppy drive, because CP/M 3 and most CP/M applications are distributed on single density floppy disks. The nonbanked system requires at least 32K (kilobytes) of Random Access Memory (RAM). The larger banked system requires at least 96K of RAM. If you want to expand beyond these requirements, you will appreciate that the banked system can include up to sixteen banks of memory. CP/M 3 and its utility programs are distributed on two floppy disks. The system disk contains the operating system and the most commonly used utility programs. A second disk contains additional utilities. How To Use CP/M 3 Documentation The CP/M 3 documentation set includes three manuals:
The CP/M Plus (CP/M Version 3) Operating System User's Guide introduces you to the CP/M 3 operating system and tells you how to use it. The User's Guide assumes that the version of CP/M 3 on your distribution disk is ready to run on your computer. To use this manual, you must be familiar with the parts of your computer, know how to set it up and turn it on, and how to handle, insert, and store disks. However, you do not need a great deal of experience with computers. The CP/M Plus (CP/M Version 3) Operating System Programmer's Guide presents information for application programmers who are creating or adapting programs to run under CP/M 3. The Programmer's Utilities Guide for the CP/M Family of Operating Systems includes information on the CP/M assemblers and debuggers that experienced programmers use to create new CP/M 3 programs. How This Guide is Organized This guide begins with simple examples, proceeds with basic concepts, then presents a detailed reference section on commands. The first four sections describe CP/M 3 operation for the first-time user. Section 1 introduces CP/M 3 and tells you how to start the operating system, enter commands, edit the command line, and create back-up copies of your distribution disks. Section 2 discusses files, disks, and drives. Section 3 describes how you can use CP/M 3 to manage your printer and console. Section 4 develops the concepts you need to use CP/M 3 commands. If you are new to CP/M, read the first four sections carefully to get a general understanding of how to use CP/M 3 before you proceed to the specific command descriptions. Section 5 provides detailed information on each CP/M 3 utility program, arranged alphabetically for easy reference. Many of these are programming utilities that you will not use until you start writing your own CP/M 3 programs. Section 6 tells you how to use ED, the CP/M 3 file editor. With ED, you can create and edit program source codes, text, and data files. Appendix A lists the messages CP/M 3 displays when it encounters special conditions, and describes corrective action where necessary. Appendix B provides an ASCII to hexadecimal conversion table. Appendix C lists the filetypes associated with CP/M 3. Appendix D lists and defines the CP/M 3 control characters. Appendix E provides a glossary of commonly used computer terms. If you are new to computers, you might find some of the topics, such as the programming utilities, difficult to understand at first. Learning to use your computer is a challenge, and we hope you will find it fun. This book proceeds step-by-step so that you can quickly proceed from opening your new system disk package to mastering CP/M 3's powerful facilities.
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