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Vintage Computers Any vintage computer systems, calculators, video games etc., but with an emphasis on 1980s and earlier equipment. |
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12th Apr 2014, 4:14 pm | #1 |
Heptode
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Worthing, Sussex, UK.
Posts: 661
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Philips P5040 Boot disk wanted
I have a Philips P5040 computer and would like a CP/M boot disk. If anyone has one of these machines out there could they copy CP/M for me.
Many thanks. |
16th Apr 2014, 8:52 pm | #2 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, UK.
Posts: 11,553
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Re: Philips P5040 Boot disk wanted
John, can't help you directly - although there's a lot of crossover here with many people on these forums being interested in retro tech of all sorts, your particular problem is so obscure that you might be better off asking in a specialist vintage computer forum such as:-
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/forum.php I think that's a primarily USA based forum, so much will depend on whether your Philips was a European oddity or was available on the world market. I can sympathise with the problem: Unlike the DOS world where all the machines DOS ran on had largely common hardware, CP/M ws available across a wide range of platforms and several microprocessor families, plus each manufacturer tended to go their own way with the disc format their machine used so you often couldn't just put a disc from one CP/M Z80 system (for example) into a drive on one made by another manufacturer and expect it to be able to read it. To get software from one machine to another it was common to have to use terminal programs and a serial lead. When I was having a similar problem (not on a Philips system, something else) many years ago there was a very active CP/M user group which tried to maintain archives of operating system discs, CP/M software and so on... but that was a very long time ago, and I can find no recent traces of their existence now. Your best hope seems to be the freakish possibility that someone still has one with the OS discs. A brief search showed that these systems have occasionally been sold complete with the discs at various times within the past few years, so someone most have them. |
18th Apr 2014, 3:34 pm | #3 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: West London, UK.
Posts: 665
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Re: Philips P5040 Boot disk wanted
Hi John, see here:-
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=261413988908 Suggest contact the seller, who may be able to help and/or put you in contact with the purchaser. Please advise back on progress. Some photos of yours would be interesting to see. CPM was a nightmare and destined/deserved to fail. e.g. a) meaningless student type commands like - PIP instead of COPY b) some manufactrures used special formating programs which they did not distribute, so you could only buy already formatted floppys from them. Little wonder DOS replaced it. Regards - Mike |
18th Apr 2014, 4:16 pm | #4 |
Heptode
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Worthing, Sussex, UK.
Posts: 661
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Re: Philips P5040 Boot disk wanted
Actually already explored that route(!). But thanks for the heads up.
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18th Apr 2014, 4:42 pm | #5 |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Derby, UK.
Posts: 7,735
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Re: Philips P5040 Boot disk wanted
At least the software for CP/M boxes was written in Assembly language, constrained for space and you could get -- and alter -- the Source Code easily enough. Can't do that with bloated, pre-compiled binaries written in high-level languages .....
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