Xref: utzoo comp.misc:1911 comp.sys.ibm.pc:11846
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!codas!karthur
From: karthur@codas.att.com (Kurt_R_Arthur)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: The New Chips
Message-ID: <2541@codas.att.com>
Date: 17 Feb 88 14:16:57 GMT
References: <3066@drivax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T, Altamonte Springs, FL
Lines: 22

In article <864@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> ralf@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralf Brown) writes:
> }In article <2037@codas.att.com> karthur@codas.att.com (Kurt_R_Arthur) writes:
> }}We got WordStar up and running under
> }}DOS 1.0 by changing a _single_ byte from a CP/M version.
> }}What may be even more amazing is the fact we had a legal copy of WordStar!
> }
> }I'll say it's amazing, since the 8080/Z80 has completely different opcodes 
> }from the 808x!  I don't suppose your legal copy happened to be source? :-)

I wanted to double check my statement, so I telephoned my friend for confirm-
ation that I hadn't misstated a fact.  He replied that CPM/86 and MS-DOS are 
extremely similar in executable file structures, and that we did in fact
convert a CPM version of WS to MS-DOS, although he couldn't remember the exact
number of bytes changed.  He continued by saying that the details of this were
(relatively) well known at that time, and had been mentioned in Byte by Jerry
Pournelle.  I went to my back issues of Byte, but was unable to find further
corroboration.

One error I _did_ make was that my friend's PC had 64K, not 16.  Oh, well!

Kurt Arthur
Software Services of Florida, Inc.