CPM ⇝

Control Program for Microcomputers

<operating system>

(CP/M) An early microcomputer operating system written by Gary Kildall of Digital Research for 8080 and Zilog Z80-based 8-bit computers.

Many of CP/M's features and conventions strongly resemble those of early DEC operating systems such as TOPS-10, OS/8, RSTS and RSX-11.

CP/M was very popular in the late 1970s and Bill Gates suggested using it as the OS for the IBM PC. IBM wanted to own and control the OS completely but could not get Digital Research to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which killed the deal. CP/M was virtually wiped out by MS-DOS after the release of the IBM PC in 1981.

The file system of MS-DOS was patterned closely on CP/M's, including the use of 8 + 3 (upper case) character file names. The first version (MS-DOS 1.0) was even limited to a single directory, like CP/M.

Last updated: 2020-08-19

Nearby terms:

Control Program ♦ Control Program for Microcomputers ♦ control-Q

Try this search on Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google, OneLook.

Loading