On 09/13/2016 04:45 PM, Liam Proven wrote: > Did CP/M-86 have networking? I remember it being an expensive, fiddly > add-on for CDOS years later, and not very flexible then. I don't think > the UCSD p-System networked at all, and DOS didn't for a long time. > Only after the advent of WfWg did MS offer a free network stack for > DOS as standard, and even to this day it's not wildly enthusiastic > about TCP/IP, although it will do it. If you used Novell Netware Lite > or P2P Netware, you got IPX; Pathworks, DECnet; Farallon, AppleTalk; > etc. > CP/Net. I don't know if Novell ever deployed their RS-422 networking with CP/M-86 however.
There were networking packages for the PC early on. Remember Banyan? They date from 1985. Corvus? Even Datapoint had an ARCnet facility for PCs in 1984. Quite a few vendors had 802.3 capability. Networking, however disorganized, was a very hot thing by 1987. --Chuck