Bit of CP/M trivia needed

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: Bit of CP/M trivia needed
>   From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey at amd.com>
>   Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 14:40:18 -0700 (PDT)
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>>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

While possible even the DMA controller needed logic to get 
it going.  The earliest machines (8080) used front pannels 
to manually enter a small boot into ram.

Most of the Intel machines however had at least minimal 
rom if only there to boot a booter. 

As it would turn out a DMA controller before the 8257 
(LSI device) was a lot of electronics in itself.  They
were rare and not often seen in micros as it represents
a lot of hardware even in minimal form.

Identify that machine you have and it's vintage.  

Allison