Xref: utzoo comp.sys.atari.st:15850 comp.os.cpm:2386
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!apollo!gaz
From: gaz@apollo.COM (Gary Zaidenweber)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.os.cpm
Subject: Atari ST CP/M emulator
Message-ID: <42dd53af.ce45@apollo.COM>
Date: 26 Apr 89 15:05:00 GMT
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 64

Along with the emulators for contemporary machines (MAC and IBM PC)
for the ST which we all know about, there is a software-only CP/M 
emulator for the ST.

First, an introduction for those who may not know anything about it:

The Atari ST CP/M emulator was apparently written by an outfit in
Germany to run on CP/M 68K before 1986. In '85 or '86, Atari 
commissioned them to port it to the ST and then placed it into the
public domain as a way to encourage CP/M users to upgrade without
losing access to their investment (sorry for stating the obvious!)

It comes with documentation for using CP/M and some of the common
CP/M programs, and a small section on writing I/O drivers -- the
emulator passes I/O instructions to drivers written in 68K assembly
language. What is missing is documentation on how CP/M was implemented
on the emulator.

My 1st question is this: Can I upgrade the CP/M on the emulator?
I'd like to use ZCPR, and consider using some of the other PD
components. Has anyone ever done this? (I'm not going to ask
if I'm off the wall :-)

My second question is this: What type of "terminal" does the
emulator emulate? I managed to get a half-decent installation
of Wordstar using the menu choice of HZ89 but its not perfect.
I also installed the printer using the CP/M lst: device but I
can't print from Wordstar, I have to 'print' to a file and then
print that out "later". On the other hand, using ^p in Dbase
DOES cause the printer to print properly. Any ideas?

My final question is about disks: The documentation as well as
a very nice help file from Bob Retelle (thanks very much, Bob)
says that only single-sided disks work under the emulator. I
have found from personal experience that double-sided disks
work just fine too, and that the disk-initializer program which
comes with the emulator does just fine at utilizing the full
disk space. Has anyone using the emulator had any problems which
they could reliably attribute to using double-sided disks? And
for pie-in-the-sky, has anyone successfully used a hard-disk
partition for the CP/M emulator? (An affirmative answer to
this last question will make my wife very happy since she will
get back the deskspace now occupied by my then-to-be retired
REAL CP/M system -- what makes her very happy makes me very 
happy!)

In addition to welcoming comments from current users of the 
emulator and answers to my questions, I would love:
	1) comments from Atari
	2) comments from the original developers
	3) additional documentation

Thanks alot.

If I've whetted anyone's appetite, I ftp'ed the emulator
package from score.stanford.edu. If there are enough requests, 
I'll post it to comp.binary.atari.st -- if there are just a
few, I'll email it to you personally.


-- 
Gary Zaidenweber        |   Its 1989:
UUCP:   umix!apollo!gaz |   Do you know where your lawyer is?
ARPA:   gaz@apollo.COM  |