Running CP/M on the PcW16

The operating system (OS) of the PcW16, Roseanne, was specially written for the machine and has been widely acclaimed by people far more knowledgeable than me but there is a severe shortage of software to run on the OS.
Relatively recently John Elliott released a CP/M simulator to run on the PcW16 which must be the best news that users of the machine have ever had. The necessary ZIP file can be downloaded from his website, together with instructions for converting it into two floppies. The PCW Today magazine website has many links to PCW-related sites including John Elliott's. The URL of PcW Today can be found in my "Links to other websites" section.

Loading CPM into the PcW16

  1. Start the computer
  2. From the Tasks menu select "Run External Program"
  3. Put Disk 1 into the drive
  4. Click on the disk icon
  5. When the screen shows "CPM for the PCW16" - click OK
  6. A dialog box will appear with a message about loading CP/M and you can either
    1. Leave Disk 1 in the drive for CP/M 2.2 - click OK - or
    2. Replace by Disk 2 for CP/M 3.1 - click OK

    Your PcW will now load with the CP/M version of your choice and various messages will appear followed finally by the familiar A> prompt. If you now type DIR at the prompt then press the Return key the contents of the disk will be displayed. You should read all the text files which will give you a lot of useful information.

    Printing

    On classic PCWs printing can be turned on and off by pressing keys [ALT]+[P] so that anything printed to screen with be echoed by the printer. The same facility is available on the PcW16 although the relevant keys are [Ctrl]+[P]. Pressing these keys toggles between printing or not. A beep from the machine signifies that the printer is active, silence means it is not.
    You will probably find that your printer does not function under CP/M. I certainly did. My Stylus 800 moved the paper up a line each time that a new line appeared on screen, but the print head never moved.
    As you are no doubt aware the PcW does not normally support 9-pin dot matrix printers, yet when I tried the ancient DMP2160 9-pin dot matrix printer it printed away very happily, and I see no reason why it shouldn't work with other 9-pin printers. Indeed when there was printing to do, the DMP2160 started immediately; no prolonged period of contemplation such as I get when using the Stylus with the built-in word processor.
    I hope that the above has given PcW16 users a start with CP/M; it will be interesting to see which of the "classic" programs will run

    A word of warning,though. When working in CP/M keep away from the TASK key or you will find yourself dumped back into the desktop and all your CP/M work lost.

    I had hoped to continue with this fascinating project, but circumstances dictate that I no longer have working space for a PcW16. If anyone out there is currently trying CP/M on the PcW16 I'm always pleased to hear from you.

    Ron King

    Andover, England

    Email ...ron@king27.freeserve.co.uk

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