CPvM

CPvM is a compatibility layer that allows many CP/M 2.2 applications to run natively on SymbOS, the multitasking graphical OS for 8-bit computers such as the Amstrad CPC and MSX2.

CPvM is a work in progress, but can already run many common CP/M applications, such as Zork and Microsoft BASIC. CPvM targets VT-52 terminal emulation, but enough ADM-3A and ANSI/VT-100 codes are also supported that many programs for those terminals (Kaypro software, etc.) will also run without modification.

CPvM includes code by Prevtenet and Prodatron.

Running

CPvM can be launched from within SymbOS SymShell either by specifying the pathname of the CP/M program (and its parameters) directly, e.g.,

cpvm cbasic.com b:\hello.bas

or by running it without any parameters, which launches an interactive CP/M command-line session:

cpvm

Building (Windows-only)

• tpa.asm contains the non-relocatable BDOS and BIOS entry points. Assemble this using the assembler built into WinApe, then run the Python script make_bin.py to convert the resulting tpa.bin into the needed format for the C build process.
• The main build uses SDCC and Nerlaska's SymbosMake SDK. The latter is now unavailable online; a partially updated version is included in the sdk directory (patched to support SDCC 4.1.12+, which uses a default calling convention incompatible with the original design of the SDK).
• With these prerequisites, navigate to the cpm folder and run make.bat.