Bit of CP/M trivia needed

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Bit of CP/M trivia needed
>   From: "Brian Knittel" <brian at quarterbyte.com>
>   Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 00:58:01 -0700
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>Hi all,
>
>Does anybody out there know for certain when the 
>term BIOS was coined? I believe it was Gary Kildall,
>and from what I can find, it was around 1978 that
>he abstracted the I/O and localized it in what
>he called the BIOS. Anyone know differently?

The term BIOS is older, early '77.  It came into use with 
V1.3 I think and for cetertain in V1.4.

>Also -- was the BIOS stored on the CP/M 
>floppy, or was it in ROM/EPROM? If not, how
>did CP/M machines boot? Was there a dedicated
>boot ROM that was used just for startup, and
>then the BIOS took over? I had one back in
>the day, but I sure can't remember this detail.

The easy answer is yes.  Tranditional CP/M systems the 
CCP/BDOS and BIOS were on the first two reserved tracks 
of the floppy (8" SSSD) and those were loaded by a boot 
rom.

Other implmentations from V2 on it was easily to store 
the BIOS in ROM and use that to boot the system.

>This is for a writing project, so I'd like
>to get it right, 
>
>Thanks!
>Brian

Thre is much myth, and misinformation of old cpm. Much of
it was from people that had never used or never been there
(in time) and their sense of reference is the PC rather 
than what came before.

Allison