On Thu, 28 May 2020 at 21:11, geneb <ge...@deltasoft.com> wrote: > > CP/M was huge in the US, especially among the S-100 system users. It was > a pretty narrow window though - from probably 1978-1982. Kaypro had a > good portion of the market as well, but like pretty much all the other > manufacturers of CP/M machines, the IBM PC compatible juggernaut beat them > cold before they fully understood the fight. I'm not aware of any CP/M > machine manufacturer that was able to successfully transition to the PC > compatible market. Some (like Kaypro) tried with offerings like the > Kaypro 16 and Kaypro 2000, but I suspect at that point it was too little, > too late. They simply couldn't compete with the uber cheap hardware > coming in from overseas.
The $64K question is, of course, how big that market was. I was reading computer magazines back then, but I didn't have one for a good while. I was aware of the prevalence of CP/M, sure. But I was a kid -- 12 at the end of 1980 -- and not interested in business/office computing. I have no idea if many UK offices or businesses were using CP/M computers. I wouldn't have paid much attention if I saw them, but I don't remember seeing many. I know when I entered the business, in 1988, some companies had old computers around, sure. Very early PCs, including clones from Epson and Sony and so on, and a few things like Apricots and Victors running DOS but not PC-compatible. I saw a handful of minicomputers -- one PDP-11, one IBM S/36 and one AS/400 in that job; the next AS/400 being about 15y later in 2002. One company sold computers that ran an OS _called_ CPM-something, but it wasn't CP/M. I am not in regular touch with anyone I worked with back then to ask, sadly. They were big chunky desktops with screen built into the case, an 8" floppy and an 8" or even 12" hard disk. I has used DR CP/M and this was utterly different. I don't think it had a microprocessor at all. I have asked on the list before and never found out any candidates for what it might be. I did one job extracting data from a laboratory BBC Micro-based system with a Torch "bridge". BBC Micros were a big desktop slab -- the classic all-in-one keyboard and system unit, but the back was a foot deep so big enough (but *not* strong enough) for a CRT to sit on it. So serious users got a 5¼" drive in a metal chassis that went over the back of the computer and was strong enough to sit a CRT on top. Like this, but on legs to go over not under the computer: http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/8bit_Upgrades/Torch_Z80Discpack.html http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1341/Torch-Z80-Disc-Pack/ It turns the 6502 Beeb into a Z80 CP/M machine. They had both CP/M files (trivial to convert) and BBC files (_not_ trivial and took us some work). I think in my first decade at work, that is the only time I ever saw an old DR CP/M system -- but I came in about a decade after CP/M's peak. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053