System information

Any or all of the CP/M component subsystems can be overlaid by an executing program. That is,
once a user's program is loaded into the TPA, the CCP, BDOS, and BIOS areas can be used as
the program's data area. A bootstrap loader is programmatically accessible whenever the BIOS
portion is not overlaid; thus, the user program need only branch to the bootstrap loader at the end
of execution and the complete CP/M monitor is reloaded from disk.
The CP/M operating system is partitioned into distinct modules, including the BIOS portion that
defines the hardware environment in which CP/M is executing. Thus, the standard system is
easily modified to any nonstandard environment by changing the peripheral drivers to handle the
custom system.
1.2 Functional Description
You interact with CP/M primarily through the CCP, which reads and interprets commands
entered through the console. In general, the CCP addresses one of several disks that are on-line.
The standard system addresses up to sixteen different disk drives. These disk drives are labeled
A through P. A disk is logged-in if the CCP is currently addressing the disk. To clearly indicate
which disk is the currently logged disk, the CCP always prompts the operator with the disk name
followed by the symbol >, indicating that the CCP is ready for another command. Upon initial
start-up, the CP/M system is loaded from disk A, and the CCP displays the following message:
CP/M VER x.x
where x.x is the CP/M version number. All CP/M systems are initially set to operate in a 20K
memory space, but can be easily reconfigured to fit any memory size on the host system (see
Section 1.6.9). Following system sign-on, CP/M automatically logs in disk A, prompts you with
the symbol A>, indicating that CP/M is currently addressing disk A, and waits for a command.
The commands are implemented at two levels: built-in commands and transient commands.
1.2.1 General Command Structure
Built-in commands are a part of the CCP program, while transient commands are loaded into the
TPA from disk and executed. The following are built-in commands:
-ERA erases specified files.
-DIR lists filenames in the directory.
-REN renames the specified file.
-SAVE saves memory contents in a file.
-TYPE types the contents of a file on the logged disk.
1.1 Introduction CP/M Operating System Manual
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