Bit of CP/M trivia needed

[Dwight K. Elvey]

>From: "Allison" <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net>
>
>>
>>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.

Hi
 My understanding was that the first ones had no ROM
and used a DMA controller that loaded bootstrapping
code from the first sector on reset. I have such a
controller on my machine. All RAM, no ROMs.
Dwight

>
>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
>
>