I owned a C64 and was familiar with the C128, but this one was odd. It wasn’t running any games, color graphics or playing music. Instead, it was connected to a monochrome monitor which always displayed either a weird command line prompt or what seemed to be some boring professional writing software.
I soon came to find that it was running CP/M and WordStar, one of the first word processors for microcomputers. My daily obsessive visits to the computer shop led to some friendship with the owner, to the point that he’d let me in and play with the machines. So, I played with CP/M and learned how to use WordStar.
Well, in case you didn’t notice, I own a C128DCR now. This blog is about how I got CP/M, WordStar, and other fun ancient software apps running on it.
↫ Celso Martinho
CP/M, of course, was the primary influence of DOS.
DEC RT-11 was the main influence for CP/M. Everything comes back to the PDP-11.
The C128 implementation of CP/M was years late and hampered by a poor I/O scheme. Yes, it was a less expensive way to run your business software (if you could get it on the machine), but by that time DOS on the IBM PC had the majority of the market and mindshare of potential customers and I doubt the C128 was considered when it came time to specify a system. At the time of the release I was writing programs for the C64, but didn’t consider the C128 due to the limited market. By the time I was ready to expand beyond the C64, the Amiga 500 was established, and honestly the PC and clones was a better bet for me as a solo developer.