Date   : Mon, 27 Jul 1992 15:14:40 GMT
From   : mcsun!news.funet.fi!funic!nokia.fi!noknic!eru@uunet.uu.net (Erkki Ruohtula)
Subject: Re: CP/M operating sys for intel machines?

In article <1992Jul24.150344.25605@wam.umd.edu> lenin@wam.umd.edu (Alberto
Alejandro Perez-Pulido) writes:
   I wanted to know if there is a full cp/m operating system
   that can run on a 386sx machine. I just purchased an extra
   hard drive and have plenty space to repartition my drive
   and try another operating system with a boot manager.
   Does anybody know if there is a cp/m that I can put in a partition
   in my hard disk and can boot from it?
   where could I get it?
   thanks.

There was a system called CP/M-86, which in the beginning of PC:s
looked like a viable competitor to MS-DOS, and was supplied with many
vendors of 8088 and 8086 machines as an alternative. Long time ago
I purchased a copy from a surplus sale, and got it to run on my PC/XT
clone, except that it did not seem to understand anything about its hard
disk (too old system version?). Later I got an AT-clone, and there attempts
to boot CP/M-86 just hung up the machine. Not any loss, since I did not have
any interesting software to run on it (CP/M-80 software naturally does not
run on CP/M-86). I don't know if there has been CP/M-86 versions that
do run on AT's, but if there is, such a version might run on your 386sx
system.

I presume CP/M-86 gradually evolved into the MS-DOS-compatible
operating system DR-DOS that Digital Research sells these days
successfully (I wonder whether DR-DOS can run any CP/M-86
software?).
--
Erkki Ruohtula     / Nokia Telecommunications
eru@tele.nokia.fi / P.O. Box 33 SF-02601 Espoo, Finland
(My private opinions, of course.)