Re: A very basic printing question re XY3

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

> > Okay, what mainframe program was CP/M based on?
>
> CP/M (Control Program/Monitor)
Wikipedia says: "Control Program for Microcomputers" which doesn't sound
*quite* right; I thought it was "Control Program/Microcomputers." But,
digging deeper, you are right. "In 1974 CP/M was a private project of Gary
Kildall, under the name "Control Program/Monitor". During the conversion of
CP/M to a commercial product, trademark registration documents filed in
November 1977 gave the product's name as "Control Program for Microcomputers."
>  was an operating system that ran
> on Intel 8080 machines (although I ran Z80 boxes, which
> understood the instruction set).

Me too. Northstar Horizon. Z80-A, IIRC.
>  Oh, you mean, "based
> on"=derived from? The ancestral model? Why, IBM's CP/CMS, of
> course! Gee, Harry...
Wikipedia: "CP/M's command line interface was patterned after the operating
systems from Digital Equipment, such as RSTS/E for the PDP-11." I thought
it was that or PL/P-1. But that's just the command-line interface. In
support of your view, it also states:
"The name shows a prevailing naming scheme of the time, as in
Kildall's/Intel's PL/M (Programming Language for Microcomputers) and Prime
Computer's PL/P (Programming Language for Prime), both suggesting IBM's
PL/I; and IBM's CP/CMS operating system, which Kildall used when working at
the Naval Postgraduate School, and which, like TOPS-10, has clear
similarities to the CP/M user interface and file system
> > when you want to turn off the 8th bit, what is the switch for use
> > with PIP?
>
> The power switch?

That would do it. But I had in mind:

PIP NEWFILE=OLDFILE[Z
The closing bracket on switches turned out to be unnecessary (a little
known fact rather like the discovery that PFUN will do instead of PFUNC).



Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx