{"id":1220,"date":"2015-08-02T16:56:38","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T20:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2024-11-19T21:57:12","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T02:57:12","slug":"getting-programs-for-the-c64-cpm-cartridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/?p=1220","title":{"rendered":"Getting Programs For The C64 CP\/M Cartridge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Commodore 64 CP\/M cartridge was released sometime in the early 1980’s, shortly after the introduction of the C64 itself. The cartridge contained the necessary Z80 chip inside to run CP\/M software natively. While a novel idea, it was a bit too late with the popularity of CP\/M waning which itself had been released almost a decade earlier. To make matters worse, it seems to only work on very early revisions of the Commodore 64. I personally am only able to get it to work reliably on a Rev A motherboard (1982, with no s-video output).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Despite all it’s shortcomings, it’s still a highly collectible Commodore artifact. Prices for the units usually range from $50 to $100 or more on eBay, depending on condition and the original box or manual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One problem exists that makes it difficult to actually “use” C64 CP\/M, beyond typing DIR or STAT. The disks for CP\/M are a custom format used only for the C64 and 1541. You aren’t able to use original CP\/M discs, not even those from the Commodore 128. Plus, while there is a standard CBMDOS BAM on the disc, it’s not what CP\/M uses for disc management so you can’t just copy files in C64 mode to the disc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, there’s a tool that exists to help with this matter. Introducing CTOOLS, a suite of command-line utilities that create and manipulate D64 disc images specifically for Commodore’s CP\/M formatted discs.<\/a> This toolset isn’t limited to C64 as it works quite well with C128 CP\/M discs as well. You’ll need to compile into binaries, which worked flawlessly on my Mac 10.10.3. An example terminal session is below. YMMV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

% cformat -0 mynewdisc.d64
\n% ctools mynewdisc.d64 p mbasic.com
\n% ctools mynewdisc.d64 p monopoly.bas
\n% ctools mynewdisc.d64 d
\n<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When done, simply write your new D64 disc image to a real disc<\/a>. Boot up C64 CP\/M, swap the disc, and type DIR to see the contents. Just like on MS-DOS, “.COM” files are executables– to run them, just type the basename without the .COM at the prompt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just in case you’re not up to compiling the tools, creating the images or finding CP\/M binaries, I’ve packaged together six D64 disc images that you can write back to a floppy<\/a> and try out on your own C64 CP\/M cartridge. The ZIP archive contains MBASIC (plus a few BASIC games), Sargon Chess, Adventure, and the Zork Trilogy. Click here to download the C64 CP\/M D64 archive.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Commodore 64 CP\/M cartridge was released sometime in the early 1980’s, shortly after the introduction of the C64 itself. The cartridge contained the necessary Z80 chip inside to run CP\/M software natively. While a novel idea, it was a bit too late with the popularity of CP\/M waning which itself had been released almost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2941,"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions\/2941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biosrhythm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}