TOPS CP/M Public Domain Disk

Dave Franson

Products: 64K CP/M 2.2 Option, FDD 3000 Disk Drive system

Developer(s): Dave Franson

Date: 1987

Type: Diskette

Platform(s): TS 2068

The TOPS CP/M Public Domain Disk collected public-domain CP/M programs for owners of the Timex FDD 3000 drive running CP/M. It was distributed through TOPS (Timex of Portugal Systems), the newsletter Dave Franson started for the drives. Its README.TXT is headed “TOPS CP/M PUBLIC DOMAIN DISK CONTENTS 05/19/87”.

Side A: BINRX and BINTX (binary file transfer, described in the first issue of the TOPS newsletter), COMTOHEX (turns a program into an Intel HEX text file, for sending BINTX to the machine you are downloading from), D and SD (directory listers), DISK76 (a file copy utility that replaces many PIP functions), VDE (a WordStar-like editor configured for the FDD 3000 with a Timex 2068 running the Monitor Emulator) with VDE.TXT and VINSTALL, COMPARE, HEXD (hex dump) and UNERA (unerase).
Side B: DDTZ (DDT with Z80 mnemonics) and the NULU library utility with its documentation NULU.TXT. The side also has PIP and COPY from the CP/M system disk.

Side A survives in two reads of two different copies, which failed on different sectors. The download’s side A image combines them: 12 unreadable sectors of the first read were filled from the second, which has the same directory and layout. After the merge every side A program is complete. Side B exists in one read only, and NULU.TXT has one unreadable 256-byte gap. Both disk images and all files are included. The disk needs CP/M 2.2 on the FDD 3000.