UPDATE!!! I have experimented more with the system and determined that the MS DOS compatibility problems demonstrated in this video are a result of bad RAM on the SWP CoPower88 board. I had no issues using the RAM Disk functionality, so I assumed all was well with the hardware. Stay tuned for a Part 3 where I will attempt to locate and fix the faulty chip(s), re-test MS DOS on the system, and possibly give the Kaypro 4 Plus 88 an apology for mis-judging it!
I used a program called UniForm by a company called MicroSolutions for reading/writing floopy disks from other CP/M based computers. It is a TSR. It made the floppy drive act like another computer. At one time I had 5 operational CP/M based computers. 1) Kaypro II 2) Kaypro 4 plus 88 3) Actrix (aka Access Matrix) 4} Epson QX10 5) Northstar Horizon (physically soldered everything to the MB) The Northstar Horizon was the only system that UniForm would not work on as it used hard sectored disks. I used ZCPR 3.3 in my latter years of using Z80 based computers.
Cool, I will have to find a copy and give it a try and see. I did try IBM Personal Editor per your suggestion on Twitter but that also failed to run on the Kaypro.
Looks like that's how this computer's display shows that the cursor is on top of a character. To use typewriter terminology, DOS feeds a line _and_ returns the carriage when a command is run, whereas CP/M only returns the carriage.
Maybe I'm just getting old, and nostalgic, but there is something really charming about old-school, clunky computers. I remember playing Ladder as a kid on an old Kaypro (II, I believe) while lying on the floor. I gave away my Mac collection ("fat Mac" and onwards) but scratch the itch with videos like this one. I still have a TRS-80 Color Computer v. 1 somewhere...
There is a program called Jugg'ler-128 from Herne systems that makes the C128 CP/M read a LOT more CP/M disk formats. Also - if I'm not mistaken there is a hack of C128 CP/M that speeds up a lot of stuff. See C=Hacking #5.
Thanks for the tips! I recall reading about the performance hack and meant to try it in the past but never got around to it. Will have to give it a shot.
This brings back memories. I owned one and it seemed like such an amazing machine at the time. The co-processor was indeed useless except as a 256k virtual drive. There was a way of running the swap function of WordPerfect on the virtual drive to make the machine run faster. I can't say I tried to run an IBM program on the Kaypro. I lived in northern Canada at the time. I think the Kaypro cost about $3k, and was hard to get. But it included a suite of software. I'm sure an IBM was double the price without the software. The good old days!
My brother and I played so much Ladder when we were kids. I know the version we played had more maps than just two. But you did repeat the same levels a few time before you got some of the other ones. But man this brings back some memories.
Nice! I didn't realize there were additional maps beyond the second one because I stopped playing after it went back to "Easy Street". I will have to revisit the game and play it more!
Great vid! I bought a Kaypro 4 in 1984 and I still have original master discs and some manuals. The discs even have original kaypro sleeves. CP/M, S-BASIC, SUPRTERM, Microsoft BASIC 80, Datastar, Reportstar, Calcstar, Wordstar, Mailmerge, The Word Plus, Microplan and C-BASIC. If you know anyone interested in original masters and/or manuals, let me know.
is only when I got into retro computing hobby that I learned that Turbo Pascal first came out on CP/M - when I got this little VGA ESP32 SBC, I used Arduino IDE to build and install FabGL, which then provides ability to boot into various MS-DOS and FreeDOS boit images - but one of these is CP/M-86 with Turbo Pascal 3, so it's a really cool way to eperience that particular slice of history
Nice. CP/M 86 is an area I didn't get to explore at all but something I'd like to poke at. Supposedly the CoPower-88 board can run it, I just need to find some software that's compatible with my hardware. Curious to see how much of a different running the 16 bit version makes.
I have a Visual Technology V1050 that came out 1983 or so. It is explicitly compatible with Dec Rainbow and Kaypro diskettes (not sure which model). It too sold with an included bindle of software : Wordstar, Muliplan (MS sprradsheet), CBasic (from DR), DR Graph, (Digital Research's graphics). It too was a "business" PC with green monochrome 9" CRT. I sent copies of my master disks to Wayne Warthan who got them into digital images (IMD format) using similar method and same software program you used. Images and manuals are archived on the web thanks to Wayne. On my channel i demo the use of submit files to manipulate Multiplan spreadsheets. My masters include CP/M Plus with highest known bios version on the web.
CP/M is fascinating from a computer historian perspective - once the dominate OS for 8-bits, quickly falls into the realm of unknown for most today. The hardware fragmentation especially on disk formats is notorious, and C= had a good solution there, but a lousy implementation of CP/M. Kaypro could have improved the machine greatly with some additional hardware development, but perhaps they thought it wouldn't pay back. And if you want to see some of the influences on CP/M, check out RT-11 for the PDP-11. Obviously some heritage there!
I haven't gone back that far in the timeline but it's certainly something I will have to check out! I did read about the earlier DEC operating systems influencing CP/M in my research though. I also found that there were lots of software offerings to enable reading of different disks formats so I guess the market stepped in to fill that need. I didn't get a chance to play around with any of those either, I was too busy writing disk images :P
If you have a landline still, there are phone connected BBSes still around. That is a cool use of this old hardware. Even the slow connection speed is no big deal because most of the screen is empty and it is only 2k even if every single cell has a character. So it would only take a few seconds to fill the screen.
20:01 - Wasn't aware of the disk rotation speed difference with high-density drives... Though the bit of info I'd always heard about using high-density drives (5.25" ones, anyway) for low-density media is that the track width on the write head is much narrower than on a low-density drive, so while they can write to low-density media they're not really good at it.
The ImageDisk software has configurable compensation so you can write an image that was taken using a 250kbps drive on a 300kbps HD drive, but I didn't want to introduce any more variables than I already had to deal with. It's also possible to modify a 360 RPM drive to spin at 300 RPM per dunfield.classiccmp.org/img42841/speed300.htm.
Wow! Very informative! Thanks for sharing! Would love to see how the kaypro software would work on an Apple II series computer and other machines Maybe another video?
Thanks! Apple, Atari, et. al. had Z-80 add on cards that allowed them to run CP/M. Unfortunately, I don't own any of those add-ons (yet!). The C128 came from the factory with both a 6502-based CPU as well as a Z-80 so it was able to run CP/M out-of-the-box.
I belonged to a Computer Club back in the day, where half the club members were CP/M users and the other half were DOS users and let's put it like this... neither half thought much of the other half. If only we'd have known of this Kaypro? We'd see, that if this computer could do it, then we could do it too, get along, that is! 😀
Hah, I was in a Commodore club and we had no such split. We were all 8-bit users until some fancy pants showed up with an Amiga for the first time! Back to the Kaypro: I will be doing a re-test of DOS software on it once I repair a faulty RAM board and then we'll get to see what it can really do!
Turbo Pascal on CP/M probably wants you to pick a console known to Kaypro 2. Even then it'll be hit or miss until you find the right one initially. Once you find it you can keep using it. TP often used the same editing commands as WordStar, so keep testing until you find consistency with that.
I picked the only Kaypro definition that was available in the config program and it mostly worked: I could move around the editor, insert, delete, etc. but whenever I typed anything it just appeared as 1s until I hit return. I imagine just one of the many terminal settings is wrong, I just need to figure out which one!
Thanks! Yea, DOS is pretty simple in that regard, but I do remember the early days of Linux - recompiling my kernel every time I made a hardware change was an overnight operation and if you got it wrong you'd have to try again the following night!
WordStar (DOS) was my first real word processor. I remember arguing with someone when they told me that WordPerfect would supplant it as the most popular word processing program. How much energy we wasted arguing, when MS Word would supplant them both one day?!?! LOL
I love how there is a bit of a fandom around the Kaypro now. I mean, it started off as a joke about it being all derp, old and slightly obscure... but now... well... I think this video speaks volumes So... how long until we start seeing scam kickstarters that are all, "hey kids, remember how nostalgic you are for Kaypro?"?
The infocom game should have worked, so that's surprising. Anyway, appreciate the many hours of time it took into demonstrating the system. Making videos in this space is a huge time investment.
@@retrobitstv I could write a very simple ms-dos-only 8086 program for you for testing, if you like. Just the bare minimum of a hello world, so that you can at least see if it works. If that sounds appealing, contact me.
It's a bit tragic how bad software archiving is for this generation of machines. It gives me more motivation to finally archive everything I've been hanging onto, though it would all be Mac software from the 90's -- if I even have anything that isn't already archived. My last attempt to do floppies got my lone working drive so gunked up it took multiple cleaning attempts to get it running again.
Agreed. At least there are some archives of Kaypro software out there. I imagine it's much harder to find stuff for any of the hundred less popular CP/M machines out there :( I had some trouble getting clean reads of the original disks so I'm going to have to take another pass it it. If I get clean reads I'll upload them all to archive.org.
I'm sure I said this before. I was told years ago. Anything below dos 3.x probably would not be IBM compatible. Yes, it was MS-dos but that was it. Upon farther research the last couple of years. I found people and articles calling up on lazy programmers who wrote code that only worked on the IBM to due things like make the program run faster. Thus, even if it did not have graphics. Since it was missing something that the IBM had. It would not run.
Not lazy programming - bypassing the IBM BIOS was for speed. Lotus 123 bypassed BIOS to write directly to video hardware and being fast helped it become the #1 selling spreadsheet on the IBM PC, beating the previous market leader Visicalc
I'm crazy about virtual terminals on old computers, I have a C128 too and I love using it with my glink232t and ultimate2's virtual modem. I wonder if it's possible to do that on CP/M side
From what I understand, you need to configure the turbo232 settings to use IRQ instead of NMI and then find a CP/M terminal emulator that supports it (possibly QTerm?). But it appears to be do-able :)
@@retrobitstv the Kermit part was amazing. I always thought it has a very clunky interface(I had to use it on my 8086 to transfer files before buying an xt-ide). The way you used it felt unbelievably natural
@@seisoloumano I was surprised when it just worked more or less on the first try: Kaypro Ubuntu. The only thing I had to fiddle with was enabling flow control to get higher speeds like 9600bps working reliably.
If C= had a SX64 with a not so fancy colored boot screen and two drives, it might've beaten all the other business machines around. Yet the 64 had a lot of business software in 1984.
It's hard to overstate the importance of an 80-column, readable screen and performant I/O for business applications. The C64 had no good options for either. The 128 had 80 columns, but was just as I/O bound as the '64.
Thank you for your informative video! About Kermit and Linux. You say at 11:17 that you installed Kermit on Linux. I have to use Kermit too for exchanging data between my PC and a classic handheld computer. However, the Kermit version in Debian 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 don't work (!). On Debian 10 I installed an ancient version of Kermit via a hack and that works. However, on Ubuntu 20.04 I can't install a working Kermit version no matter what. You said you installed with the "apt-get" command which means you're using a Debian based Linux distro. May I ask which distro you're using? I hope that in the future, when I upgrade my distro, I can still exchange files via a serial connection with Kermit.
@@retrobitstv Thanks for your reply. You might be in for a nasty surprise then. Be warned and read on. I don't know if the Kermit version in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) works because I couldn't use its package in Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa), which is my current distro. Guess I'll have to try from a "Live" USB Stick. It's even worse in 20.04. There is CKermit and GKermit. GKermit looks weird and most definitely does *not* work. One must install CKermit in Linux. However, CKermit is not included in Debian 10 and therefore not in Ubuntu 20.04. I think that's because the maintainer of Kermit, at hat point in time, changed its website, way of distribution, or something like that. In Debian 10 an antique version from the official Kermit website works (!), but for Ubuntu 20.04 no such luck. I succeeded in compiling Kermit from source code in Ubuntu 20.04 without errors. It starts up. But it'll not work. On older computers: no problem. But 20.04? Forget about it. We classic computer users should verify if CKermit nowadays still works!
That is unfortunate. I wonder what changed between versions? It really should "just work" since it's just ASCII text. Out of curiosity, are you using BASH on 20.04 or ZSH?
I have a hard time transferring files to or from CP/M (with Kermit or anything else). You seem to know how to use it. Can youmake a video on how to use Kermit on CP/M? You have to set CP/M to use the paper tape puncher ot the console to sent stuff? I can't find any Kermit CP/M info on the internet...
I imagine it's going to vary from machine to machine. On my Kaypro, I didn't have to do anything on CP/M except set the baud rate of the RS232 interface to match that of the WiFi modem I had connected. When I launched Kermit, it was immediately able to communicate with the modem with no further setup required. The Kaypro only has a single serial port, for what that's worth. Sorry that's probably not helpful to your case.
@@retrobitstv Thanks. I tried to exchange files via a serial connection (null modem?) between my modern PC and a hobby computer running CP/M. I managed to do so with XModem now. That adds "garbage" at the end of a file as you might know. But luckily it didn't cause the executable file to fail/become corrupt.
@@retrobitstv True. But since you're trying to get the DOS side of things working, I thought it might be worth a try. Though it's a bit curious that Planetfall didn't work. Don't the DOS versions lean on the ANSI terminal driver? So they should be pretty hardware-agnostic... Maybe it's the ANSI driver itself that's the problem - from the directory listing it looked like it included one of its own...
Yeah the DOS 2.11 disk had a Kaypro-specific ANSI driver for both 24 and 25 line terminals. The DOS 1.25 disk I ended up having to use didn't seem to have such a driver, so I'm sure that was limiting as well.
Commodore and Apple aren't CP/M machines. Technically the 128 can run CP/M, but it is a VERY poor CPM machine and wasn't released until after the demise of CP/M.. The pet, vic and 64 are 6502 based machines. I think the 64 had a CP/M cartridge or something, but it't not a CP/M machine. CP/M is around the Z80 processor.
UPDATE!!! I have experimented more with the system and determined that the MS DOS compatibility problems demonstrated in this video are a result of bad RAM on the SWP CoPower88 board. I had no issues using the RAM Disk functionality, so I assumed all was well with the hardware. Stay tuned for a Part 3 where I will attempt to locate and fix the faulty chip(s), re-test MS DOS on the system, and possibly give the Kaypro 4 Plus 88 an apology for mis-judging it!
I used a program called UniForm by a company called MicroSolutions for reading/writing floopy disks from other CP/M based computers. It is a TSR. It made the floppy drive act like another computer.
At one time I had 5 operational CP/M based computers.
1) Kaypro II
2) Kaypro 4 plus 88
3) Actrix (aka Access Matrix)
4} Epson QX10
5) Northstar Horizon (physically soldered everything to the MB)
The Northstar Horizon was the only system that UniForm would not work on as it used hard sectored disks.
I used ZCPR 3.3 in my latter years of using Z80 based computers.
WordStar 3.x or earlier for DOS should run fine on that version of MS-DOS, since it was ported from CP/M with the bare minimum changes necessary.
Cool, I will have to find a copy and give it a try and see. I did try IBM Personal Editor per your suggestion on Twitter but that also failed to run on the Kaypro.
I really like how the drive letter flashes during disk access. I wasn't aware CP/M did that.
Looks like that's how this computer's display shows that the cursor is on top of a character. To use typewriter terminology, DOS feeds a line _and_ returns the carriage when a command is run, whereas CP/M only returns the carriage.
I grew up knowing virtually nothing about pre-DOS machines (aside from the Apple II series) so getting a look at CP/M systems is very interesting!
Maybe I'm just getting old, and nostalgic, but there is something really charming about old-school, clunky computers. I remember playing Ladder as a kid on an old Kaypro (II, I believe) while lying on the floor. I gave away my Mac collection ("fat Mac" and onwards) but scratch the itch with videos like this one. I still have a TRS-80 Color Computer v. 1 somewhere...
I remember thinking how terrific WordStar was on my first 8088. Imagine...entire applications that fit on a floppy disk... Fun episode!
There is a program called Jugg'ler-128 from Herne systems that makes the C128 CP/M read a LOT more CP/M disk formats. Also - if I'm not mistaken there is a hack of C128 CP/M that speeds up a lot of stuff. See C=Hacking #5.
Thanks for the tips! I recall reading about the performance hack and meant to try it in the past but never got around to it. Will have to give it a shot.
@@retrobitstv I have been meaning to try it out too but never got 'round to it. :)
This brings back memories. I owned one and it seemed like such an amazing machine at the time. The co-processor was indeed useless except as a 256k virtual drive. There was a way of running the swap function of WordPerfect on the virtual drive to make the machine run faster. I can't say I tried to run an IBM program on the Kaypro. I lived in northern Canada at the time. I think the Kaypro cost about $3k, and was hard to get. But it included a suite of software. I'm sure an IBM was double the price without the software. The good old days!
Thank you for the super-interesting and deep review! Those 32 minutes felt like two!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I used this back in the day. Thanks for this video.
Excellent video!
My brother and I played so much Ladder when we were kids. I know the version we played had more maps than just two. But you did repeat the same levels a few time before you got some of the other ones. But man this brings back some memories.
Nice! I didn't realize there were additional maps beyond the second one because I stopped playing after it went back to "Easy Street". I will have to revisit the game and play it more!
Great vid! I bought a Kaypro 4 in 1984 and I still have original master discs and some manuals. The discs even have original kaypro sleeves. CP/M, S-BASIC, SUPRTERM, Microsoft BASIC 80, Datastar, Reportstar, Calcstar, Wordstar, Mailmerge, The Word Plus, Microplan and C-BASIC. If you know anyone interested in original masters and/or manuals, let me know.
is only when I got into retro computing hobby that I learned that Turbo Pascal first came out on CP/M - when I got this little VGA ESP32 SBC, I used Arduino IDE to build and install FabGL, which then provides ability to boot into various MS-DOS and FreeDOS boit images - but one of these is CP/M-86 with Turbo Pascal 3, so it's a really cool way to eperience that particular slice of history
Nice. CP/M 86 is an area I didn't get to explore at all but something I'd like to poke at. Supposedly the CoPower-88 board can run it, I just need to find some software that's compatible with my hardware. Curious to see how much of a different running the 16 bit version makes.
I have a Visual Technology V1050 that came out 1983 or so. It is explicitly compatible with Dec Rainbow and Kaypro diskettes (not sure which model). It too sold with an included bindle of software : Wordstar, Muliplan (MS sprradsheet), CBasic (from DR), DR Graph, (Digital Research's graphics). It too was a "business" PC with green monochrome 9" CRT. I sent copies of my master disks to Wayne Warthan who got them into digital images (IMD format) using similar method and same software program you used. Images and manuals are archived on the web thanks to Wayne. On my channel i demo the use of submit files to manipulate Multiplan spreadsheets. My masters include CP/M Plus with highest known bios version on the web.
I maintain and code a modern Delphi application for a machine shop, so I know Pascal fairly well. It was pretty fun to see an early example here.
CP/M is fascinating from a computer historian perspective - once the dominate OS for 8-bits, quickly falls into the realm of unknown for most today. The hardware fragmentation especially on disk formats is notorious, and C= had a good solution there, but a lousy implementation of CP/M. Kaypro could have improved the machine greatly with some additional hardware development, but perhaps they thought it wouldn't pay back. And if you want to see some of the influences on CP/M, check out RT-11 for the PDP-11. Obviously some heritage there!
I haven't gone back that far in the timeline but it's certainly something I will have to check out! I did read about the earlier DEC operating systems influencing CP/M in my research though. I also found that there were lots of software offerings to enable reading of different disks formats so I guess the market stepped in to fill that need. I didn't get a chance to play around with any of those either, I was too busy writing disk images :P
If you have a landline still, there are phone connected BBSes still around. That is a cool use of this old hardware. Even the slow connection speed is no big deal because most of the screen is empty and it is only 2k even if every single cell has a character. So it would only take a few seconds to fill the screen.
20:01 - Wasn't aware of the disk rotation speed difference with high-density drives... Though the bit of info I'd always heard about using high-density drives (5.25" ones, anyway) for low-density media is that the track width on the write head is much narrower than on a low-density drive, so while they can write to low-density media they're not really good at it.
The ImageDisk software has configurable compensation so you can write an image that was taken using a 250kbps drive on a 300kbps HD drive, but I didn't want to introduce any more variables than I already had to deal with. It's also possible to modify a 360 RPM drive to spin at 300 RPM per dunfield.classiccmp.org/img42841/speed300.htm.
Wow! Very informative! Thanks for sharing! Would love to see how the kaypro software would work on an Apple II series computer and other machines Maybe another video?
Thanks! Apple, Atari, et. al. had Z-80 add on cards that allowed them to run CP/M. Unfortunately, I don't own any of those add-ons (yet!). The C128 came from the factory with both a 6502-based CPU as well as a Z-80 so it was able to run CP/M out-of-the-box.
What about the Kaypro 16?
I belonged to a Computer Club back in the day, where half the club members were CP/M users and the other half were DOS users and let's put it like this... neither half thought much of the other half. If only we'd have known of this Kaypro? We'd see, that if this computer could do it, then we could do it too, get along, that is! 😀
Hah, I was in a Commodore club and we had no such split. We were all 8-bit users until some fancy pants showed up with an Amiga for the first time! Back to the Kaypro: I will be doing a re-test of DOS software on it once I repair a faulty RAM board and then we'll get to see what it can really do!
Turbo Pascal on CP/M probably wants you to pick a console known to Kaypro 2. Even then it'll be hit or miss until you find the right one initially. Once you find it you can keep using it. TP often used the same editing commands as WordStar, so keep testing until you find consistency with that.
I picked the only Kaypro definition that was available in the config program and it mostly worked: I could move around the editor, insert, delete, etc. but whenever I typed anything it just appeared as 1s until I hit return. I imagine just one of the many terminal settings is wrong, I just need to figure out which one!
Get in contact with the free DOS team they could possibly help you get free DOS somehow running on that system, it's worth a shot!
Nice job, Matt! Re: not "IBM compatible" - seems this is an early example of why Un*x/Linux is so powerful - portability.
Thanks! Yea, DOS is pretty simple in that regard, but I do remember the early days of Linux - recompiling my kernel every time I made a hardware change was an overnight operation and if you got it wrong you'd have to try again the following night!
Users 0 through 15. The era of WordStar, Adventure, and Ladder.
WordStar (DOS) was my first real word processor. I remember arguing with someone when they told me that WordPerfect would supplant it as the most popular word processing program. How much energy we wasted arguing, when MS Word would supplant them both one day?!?! LOL
I love how there is a bit of a fandom around the Kaypro now. I mean, it started off as a joke about it being all derp, old and slightly obscure... but now... well... I think this video speaks volumes
So... how long until we start seeing scam kickstarters that are all, "hey kids, remember how nostalgic you are for Kaypro?"?
Ladder makes you repeat levels before you see the new ones. There several!
The infocom game should have worked, so that's surprising. Anyway, appreciate the many hours of time it took into demonstrating the system. Making videos in this space is a huge time investment.
I will continue my quest to get MS DOS 2.11 working on the system and see if that changes the results. Thanks for watching!
@@retrobitstv I could write a very simple ms-dos-only 8086 program for you for testing, if you like. Just the bare minimum of a hello world, so that you can at least see if it works. If that sounds appealing, contact me.
@@JimLeonard Hi Jim, if that's something you would be interested in helping test out I would certainly be happy to give it a try!
It's a bit tragic how bad software archiving is for this generation of machines. It gives me more motivation to finally archive everything I've been hanging onto, though it would all be Mac software from the 90's -- if I even have anything that isn't already archived. My last attempt to do floppies got my lone working drive so gunked up it took multiple cleaning attempts to get it running again.
Agreed. At least there are some archives of Kaypro software out there. I imagine it's much harder to find stuff for any of the hundred less popular CP/M machines out there :( I had some trouble getting clean reads of the original disks so I'm going to have to take another pass it it. If I get clean reads I'll upload them all to archive.org.
I'm sure I said this before. I was told years ago. Anything below dos 3.x probably would not be IBM compatible. Yes, it was MS-dos but that was it. Upon farther research the last couple of years. I found people and articles calling up on lazy programmers who wrote code that only worked on the IBM to due things like make the program run faster. Thus, even if it did not have graphics. Since it was missing something that the IBM had. It would not run.
Not lazy programming - bypassing the IBM BIOS was for speed. Lotus 123 bypassed BIOS to write directly to video hardware and being fast helped it become the #1 selling spreadsheet on the IBM PC, beating the previous market leader Visicalc
I'm crazy about virtual terminals on old computers, I have a C128 too and I love using it with my glink232t and ultimate2's virtual modem. I wonder if it's possible to do that on CP/M side
From what I understand, you need to configure the turbo232 settings to use IRQ instead of NMI and then find a CP/M terminal emulator that supports it (possibly QTerm?). But it appears to be do-able :)
@@retrobitstv the Kermit part was amazing. I always thought it has a very clunky interface(I had to use it on my 8086 to transfer files before buying an xt-ide). The way you used it felt unbelievably natural
@@seisoloumano I was surprised when it just worked more or less on the first try: Kaypro Ubuntu. The only thing I had to fiddle with was enabling flow control to get higher speeds like 9600bps working reliably.
14:00 Looks like a prototype of Willy The Worm actually
Can you reverse engineer Ladder with the files you have?
I think Murray from Stranger Things used one of these
I just watched the new season last week! I did see the Kaypro along with an Amiga 1000 and a Tandy 1000!
1:21 Did you see this? Most CP/M systems contained a GSX subsystem for graphics. Why does nobody ever pay attention to that?
Even back then it was more useful as a doorstop, rather than as a computer.
I'm not sure I'd go that far. The CP/M side seems decent enough
If C= had a SX64 with a not so fancy colored boot screen and two drives, it might've beaten all the other business machines around. Yet the 64 had a lot of business software in 1984.
It's hard to overstate the importance of an 80-column, readable screen and performant I/O for business applications. The C64 had no good options for either. The 128 had 80 columns, but was just as I/O bound as the '64.
@@johnwiggins2395 The 128 was a lot better with regard to disk I/O than the 64. Still not as good as the competition but at least in the same ballpark
Found one at the tip for $20, anyone know how much I could sell it for?
Maybe the problem is related to processor being a z80 instead of 8088
Thank you for your informative video!
About Kermit and Linux. You say at 11:17 that you installed Kermit on Linux. I have to use Kermit too for exchanging data between my PC and a classic handheld computer. However, the Kermit version in Debian 10 and Ubuntu 20.04 don't work (!). On Debian 10 I installed an ancient version of Kermit via a hack and that works. However, on Ubuntu 20.04 I can't install a working Kermit version no matter what. You said you installed with the "apt-get" command which means you're using a Debian based Linux distro.
May I ask which distro you're using? I hope that in the future, when I upgrade my distro, I can still exchange files via a serial connection with Kermit.
I was using Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS with "ckermit/bionic,now 302-5.3 amd64". I'm surprised it won't work on 20.04 but I haven't upgraded yet.
@@retrobitstv Thanks for your reply. You might be in for a nasty surprise then. Be warned and read on.
I don't know if the Kermit version in Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish) works because I couldn't use its package in Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa), which is my current distro. Guess I'll have to try from a "Live" USB Stick.
It's even worse in 20.04. There is CKermit and GKermit. GKermit looks weird and most definitely does *not* work. One must install CKermit in Linux. However, CKermit is not included in Debian 10 and therefore not in Ubuntu 20.04. I think that's because the maintainer of Kermit, at hat point in time, changed its website, way of distribution, or something like that. In Debian 10 an antique version from the official Kermit website works (!), but for Ubuntu 20.04 no such luck.
I succeeded in compiling Kermit from source code in Ubuntu 20.04 without errors. It starts up. But it'll not work. On older computers: no problem. But 20.04? Forget about it.
We classic computer users should verify if CKermit nowadays still works!
That is unfortunate. I wonder what changed between versions? It really should "just work" since it's just ASCII text. Out of curiosity, are you using BASH on 20.04 or ZSH?
nice ！up！
I have a hard time transferring files to or from CP/M (with Kermit or anything else). You seem to know how to use it. Can youmake a video on how to use Kermit on CP/M? You have to set CP/M to use the paper tape puncher ot the console to sent stuff? I can't find any Kermit CP/M info on the internet...
I imagine it's going to vary from machine to machine. On my Kaypro, I didn't have to do anything on CP/M except set the baud rate of the RS232 interface to match that of the WiFi modem I had connected. When I launched Kermit, it was immediately able to communicate with the modem with no further setup required. The Kaypro only has a single serial port, for what that's worth. Sorry that's probably not helpful to your case.
@@retrobitstv Thanks. I tried to exchange files via a serial connection (null modem?) between my modern PC and a hobby computer running CP/M. I managed to do so with XModem now. That adds "garbage" at the end of a file as you might know. But luckily it didn't cause the executable file to fail/become corrupt.
Who loaned you the 486?
My friend Simon who is into retro machines that are slightly newer than the ones I am into :)
Kaypro 92. Not sure why they couldn't have done their math problem before releasing the machine
I see what you did there :P
@@retrobitstv My sense of humor is as good as ever, unfortunately.
The world needs more silliness if you ask me :P
@@retrobitstv Indeed, we must dare to be stupid
@@tetsujin_144 It's so easy to do!
29:33 (Planetfall fails to run)
As old as Planetfall is, maybe an older Infocom game (i.e. Zork I) would fare better?
I guess I should try it just to see. The Infocom games are largely available natively for CP/M already so I didn't both downloading the DOS versions.
@@retrobitstv True. But since you're trying to get the DOS side of things working, I thought it might be worth a try.
Though it's a bit curious that Planetfall didn't work. Don't the DOS versions lean on the ANSI terminal driver? So they should be pretty hardware-agnostic... Maybe it's the ANSI driver itself that's the problem - from the directory listing it looked like it included one of its own...
Yeah the DOS 2.11 disk had a Kaypro-specific ANSI driver for both 24 and 25 line terminals. The DOS 1.25 disk I ended up having to use didn't seem to have such a driver, so I'm sure that was limiting as well.
"many aspects of the operating system have been copied by Microsoft" That is the understatement of the century...
that's not true though.
it was _copied_ by Seattle Computer, then *bought* by Microsoft
@@nneeerrrd You're absolutely right. I totally forgot that.
Jeez talk about fan dust at 5:10!!!!!
Heh yea, whoever owned that particular '84 model appears to have gotten some serious use out of it!
Commodore and Apple aren't CP/M machines. Technically the 128 can run CP/M, but it is a VERY poor CPM machine and wasn't released until after the demise of CP/M.. The pet, vic and 64 are 6502 based machines. I think the 64 had a CP/M cartridge or something, but it't not a CP/M machine.
CP/M is around the Z80 processor.