r/cpm | reddlx

Recently I once again had the chance to welcome the former sysop of Snobsoft during his yearly short visit from the US to Germany, here at my place in Hamburg. And he didn’t come empty‑handed - he brought along a gorgeous, like‑new C128D. But for me as a C128 newbie, all the BBS stuff turned out to be anything but simple. My RS232 interface for the modem initially refused to work with it and even caused the C128 to malfunction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpjJsQ70dGE

I’m also still looking for tips on QLink and how to get it running under C128 CP/M using a User‑Port modem.

If you want to jump straight to the good stuff in the video - the BBS segment starts at 15:20.

Enjoy!

Here’s the full timeline of the video:

00:00 - 01:05 --- The visitor from the USA has arrived and brought something with him

01:06 - 05:10 --- Unboxing the Commodore 128D

05:11 - 05:49 --- Preparing for the first boot of the computer

05:50 - 06:20 --- Fire up the ~~Quattro~~ Commodore after 40 years of beauty slumber

06:21 - 12:24 --- Dealing with this case-opening mechanism from hell and taming the fan

12:25 - 12:47 --- Silence

12:48 - 14:38 --- Troubleshooting the RS232-UP9600 modem adapter

14:39 - 15:11 --- Success

15:15 - --- Now the fun part begins - checking out the C128D

15:20 - 16:10 --- Loading Multi-Term 128 - floppy drive acting up a bit

16:15 - 18:39 --- Dial into the 300-baud BBS

18:40 - 20:21 --- Dial into the Snobsoft BBS

20:22 - 21:30 --- Trying out CP/M 3.0 with the original Commodore C128 disk

21:33 - 22:30 --- Trying to get QTerm 128 running for the Hayes 1670 modem

22:38 - --- How to get CP/M software onto a CP/M disk on the C128

22:40 - 23:15 --- Loading Big Blue Reader 128 - Version 4.10

23:16 - 24:10 --- Step by step to a working CP/M disk

24:11 - 24:23 --- Rant: the only key that works in this interface from hell to reach the copy menu - the up arrow

24:25 - 26:50 --- Copying process and testing whether everything arrived correctly on CP/M

26:51 - 27:58 --- Loading obscure C128 BBS software "128 Mailbox" - Mailbox = BBS in Germany

27:59 - 28:34 --- I know that guy! Greetings to Axel aka Gandalf

28:37 - 29:11 --- Something I’ve never done before in 40 Years...

29:15 - 29:49 --- Thank-you section

I've been experimenting a bit with CP/M emulation and have run into a few stumbling points that have caused a little frustration.

Firstly, I liked yaze-ag initially but ran into some likely terminal emulation problems that made a few control keys not work as expected in the 'ed' editor (I believe ^Z wasn't working at some critical times), this led me to try some of the z80pack emulators which seem not to have this problem.

With z80pack cpmsim and cromemcosim the terminal handling seemed to work better for me, but I was finding that I:

couldn't change diskettes without resetting the machine
entering a bad drive letter would also require a machine reset

Regarding #2, is it normal on CP/M machines, for this to be an unrecoverable error?

Regarding #1, I remember reading something about the need (particularly with earlier versions of CP/M?) to need to log off a drive (maybe via Ctrl+C or some other kind of sort reset, I'm not sure if/how this was done) to force CP/M to have to re-login the drive to avoid disk corruption. I seem to have gotten the feeling like this may have only been with 1.x versions so I may be on the wrong track (no pun) here.

Despite CP/M's somewhat spartan nature, I'm having a hard time believing that users couldn't routinely change floppy disks without resetting machines...maybe someone with more knowledge on this can shed some light...?

I'm definitely open to other emulator suggestions (need to run on linux) if people have favorites that are maybe a little more solid or friendlier than what I've been trying so far.