After looking through chapter 5 in more detail, and after talking with Gabe about what we will see in chapter 6 as the giant hook at location 5, I decided it is better to postpone the next quiz until after we get through chapter 6.

I'll share my notes on Chapter 5: Organization of CP/M and see if you think there are important points I missed. I'll also demo the execution of some of the commands introduced in the chapter.

Read Chapter 6: Interfacing with CP/M and prepare an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper front and back with notes on this chapter and the previous one for use on a quiz on these chapters at the beginning of next class.

We'll begin class with the promised quiz on the reading of chapters 3 and 4 in our text.

After the quiz we will discuss Chapter 3: The CP/M-Based Computer and Chapter 4: What the Operating System Provides.

This book thankfully only assumes a minimum size microcomputer running some standard version of of the CP/M operating system. We are running CP/M version 2.2, the most recent of these standard versions.

The author tells us that we will use the term CRT (which stands for cathod-ray tube) as the term we will use of the physical device we use to communicate with our computer.

In our specific case, our CRT will consist of our computer keyboard, together with a terminal application in which we run SIMH configured to emulate the Altair 8800 running CP/M.

We will need to make reference to Figure 3-1 as we proceed with our study:

Make note of the comment in the figure intro text that says [w]hile the schematic representations of the device selectors indicate real switches, the switching is actually accomplished by selectively accessing different device driver subroutines with the operating system in response to bit patterns stored in the IOBYT.

Also take a moment to reflect on our entire setup here in light of the statement I made in class last time that hardware and software are logically equivalent.

Make sure you know how to use PIP, the Peripheral Interchange Program to copy files between disks. We also need to know how to use two utility programs that will not be mentioned in our text, W.COM and R.COM. These are used to write and read files to the host operating system respectively.

Read Chapter 5: Organization of CP/M. Again, read this chapter with an eye towards understanding, and take good notes! We won't be able to effectively use our systems if we don't understand how they work.