Date : Sun, 21 Nov 1982 17:05:00-CST
From : mknox at Utexas-11
Subject: Model-II
There are a number of CP/M implementations for the Model-II. Briefly, (and
in my own humble opinion):
o P&T -- I agree with your complaints, but feel that theirs is the best
overall product for the price. The provide very good documentation
(a rare bird indeed). They support a variety of disk drives, both
hard and soft. They provide a good supply of useful, well written
utilities. And they provide good customer support (except for certain
policies like not providing source). Only one other complaint; the
double density disk format they chose is a little strange, 16 sectors
of 512 bytes (most use 15 x 512). This does provide more storage
than others, but is very hard to read on other machines.
o Lifeboat -- The other current major supplier. Not as good an implementation
as P&T, and with the usual Lifeboat support (one customer I know of is
still waiting for an answer to his question after 2 years!). Does
support 8 x 1k disk sectors.
o CPU SHOP and FMG -- sold a lot of copies early on, but have mostly faded
away, at least as a CP/M Model-II supplier. More expensive.
o ATON -- one of the best jobs of fully utilizing the Model-II hardware that
I have seen. Only a little more expensive. Fair documentations,
actually quite good for a hacker, not near as good as P&T if you are
a business turnkey type. The ATON version(s) support disk caching
through extra memory cards, and also concurrent operations using
multiple banked memory cards. I have no direct experience running
the system (called JOBSTREAM), but careful review of the manuals
makes it look like it was done by a hacker who knows his way around
a system. ATON has only had it out a few months.
Conclusion: I'd still go with the P&T. Most products now support it (Word-
star, dBASE, etc.), where some of the other implementations may require
some effort to install application packages. [Side note: the P&T
makes full use of the CRT capabilities, much better than Lifeboat]
I am recommending P&T to those who ask me; and using it as a base
for a Model-16 or Model-II Enhanced CP/M-68K implementation.