• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

CP/M on Commodore 64/128

ziloo

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2006
Messages
990
Location
in the basement
Hello folks,
Has anybody been successful in running cp/m on commodore 64/128,
and was it practical? I have read very negative remarks and reviews...

ziloo 😊
 
It works but is a little slow.

Here is a site with some common programs and an 80-column terminal add-on.

 
I have made it run on a C64 but it wasn't a success. two main reasons: the 40 char screen and lack of 1541 floppies with programs.
I ran CP/M on the 128 in the '80s and that went well. But knowing only people in the Commodore scene meant that getting programs for CP/M was troublesome. But what I got ran fine IMHO. But except the native mode I had no comparison with other computers so I didn't complain. Then I started to work for a PC company where I had a PC including a HDD etc. for free.......
 
..........you have walked into my laboratory......unfortunately I am not in the building right now....
Well John....I visited your mansion/youtube channel! For some reason....
your laboratory reminds me so much of the "Rocky Horror Show" castle
(... it could be your hairdo ;) !!). All it needs is a Magenta singing:

......It's so dreamy.... oh fantasy free me ......so you can't see me...let's do the time-warp again.

ziloo 😊
 
Last edited:
Uh, yeah. Please disregard the OSHA violations hanging from the ceiling.
Anyways while my own experience with C64 CP/M is limited it seemed that the floppy format was almost entirely the reason why it failed to see much support. There was only a handful of CP/M machine vendors that wanted to do their own thing but otherwise everyone stuck to MFM disk encoding which meant software vendors didn't have to distribute multiple copies of their software.
As mentioned above a 128 and a 1571 were considerably better at handling CP/M and could then also read/write MFM disks but that was 1985 and CP/M by then was rapidly becoming unattractive.
 
I tried that too, but when I found out that the cartridge only works on the oldest C64s (thanks to a bug in VIC II) I gave up. The speed of e.g. Basic is the same as on Commodore 64 V2.
 
I tried that too, but when I found out that the cartridge only works on the oldest C64s (thanks to a bug in VIC II) I gave up. The speed of e.g. Basic is the same as on Commodore 64 V2.
Has nothing to do with any "bug" in the VIC-II. It's just a timing condition that only works with the old Motorola PLL setup. This is in the original 326298 board, the 250407 board, and the SX-64.

It won't be stable in the boards that use the 8701 instead.
 
Thank you for the explanation, so on my C64 C (board 250469) cartridge CP/M will not work correctly. It should work on my SX-64.
 
Back
Top