It's a real pleasure to find a book which explains CP/M properly, without resorting to mind-grinding grammer. After reading this book, the internal operation of all versions, including MP/M. Concurrent CP/M and CP/M 3.x (aka CP/M Plus) become reasonably understandable.

CP/M has a deserved reputation as a standard, with all the features and facilities that are reasonable on small machines, but it also has something of a reputation as an ogre, at least when it comes to programming.

Part of the reason for this was that the documentation was (and in general still is!) unreadable.

This book, however, clarifies things wonderfully. Each chapter expands the subject, and gives useful examples of command-line switches... for example, how to get the maximum information (for development) when using a compiler or how to use the machine most efficiently (for production).

The Transient Programs (PIP, STAT, SUBMIT, DDT, ED and so on) are documented clearly, with a very useful quick-reference section on each. 'Standard' software is given the same exhaustive treatment, including Wordstar/Mailmerge, several languages, and some good assemblers.

More usefully, the same is done to the kind of system-functions which are essential to write editors, compilers, linkers and so on. If you read this book thoroughly you'll be able to do anything you want with the system.

But this book is even better than that. It's the only one I've seen which explains (in English) how to use real systems-programming tools, like linkers and relocating assemblers.

It makes a completely adequate substitute for the standard system-documentation. It's not only smaller, but far more readable.