Every CompuPro CP/M, sorted out
CompuPro genuinely sold eight CP/M-family operating systems for its S-100 machines — from plain CP/M 2.2 on a Z80 to Concurrent DOS on a 286 with Z80 slave boards. Two names you’ll see floating around, CP/M Plus and a standalone MP/M-80, have no CompuPro product behind them in any source searched. This page covers each one: what it was, what hardware it needed, and which boot disks actually survive in public archives today.
The one thing that makes a CompuPro disk a CompuPro disk
It’s the boot/BIOS layer, not the DRI kernel. A CompuPro System Master carries the Disk 1 / Disk 1A boot-ROM path, a BOOT loader, and a CompuPro CBIOS (later TMXBIOS on the x86 line, XIOS under Concurrent) with drivers for Disk 1/1A floppies — including 256/512/1024-byte MFM sectors — Disk 2 / Disk 3 hard disks, System Support 1 / Interfacer consoles, and M-Drive/H RAM disk as drive M:. A generic Digital Research distribution has none of that and will not boot CompuPro hardware as-is. That distinction decides almost every “does it survive?” answer below.
At a glance
The February 1984 Data Decisions profile of the System 816 lists exactly this set (plus CP/M 2.2) as the 816 operating systems — a good period check on what was real.
| OS | CPU | Base DRI version | CompuPro versions | Multi-user? | Archived boot image? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CP/M-80 | Z80 (CPU-Z) or 8085 (CPU 8085/88) | CP/M 2.2 | 2.2H, 2.2K, 2.2N, 2.2Q, 2.2NZ, 2.2LD, 2.2LM | No | Yes |
| CP/M Plus / CP/M 3.0 | Z80 | CP/M 3.0 | — none found — | No | None found |
| MP/M-80 / MP/M II | Z80 / 8085, banked RAM | MP/M II 2.0 / 2.1 | — no standalone product found — | Yes (DRI) | No |
| CP/M-86 | 8086/8087 (CPU 86/87), 8088 (8085/88), 286 | CP/M-86 1.1 | 1.1PA/PAA, 1.1PB, 1.1PD, “1R” set | No | Yes |
| CP/M 8-16 | 8085+8088 (CPU 8085/88) | CP/M-86 1.1, CompuPro proprietary | 1.1R | No — single-user, single-tasking | Yes |
| MP/M-86 | 8086/8087, 286 | MP/M-86 2.0 / 2.1 | 2.1 (bundled 816/D, /F) | Yes | No standalone image |
| MP/M 8-16 | 8085+8088 (CPU 8085/88) | MP/M-86 2.1 + MP/M-80 engine (G&G) | V2.1F | Yes — up to 8 (OS ceiling) | Yes |
| Concurrent CP/M 8-16 | 8085/88 or 8086/286 | Concurrent CP/M-86 3.1 | 3.1 | Yes — multi-user + multi-tasking | Yes |
| Concurrent DOS 8-16 | 8085/88, 8086, 286 + SPUZ slaves | Concurrent DOS (BDOS 3.1+) | 3.1x, 4.1, 5.0 | Yes — up to 14 consoles, 16 SPUZ | Yes |
| CP/M-68K | 68000 (CPU 68K, opt. 68451 MMU) | CP/M-68K (DRI, 1982) | 1.0 (channel), 1.1, 1.3 | No | 1.1 only |
All variant cards are shown below, grouped by processor family, and the comparison table above is the complete at-a-glance list.
The variants, one by one
Grouped by processor family. “Survival” means a bootable CompuPro System Master image in a public archive — not a generic DRI file set, and not a catalogue entry for media that isn’t online.
CP/M-80 — CP/M 2.2
Image survives
CompuPro’s single-user 8-bit OS: DRI CP/M 2.2 in substance (the “CP/M-80” name is a later disk-label retronym) with a CompuPro CBIOS. It was the standard OS of the pre-816 board business and shipped bundled with the System 816/Z. The surviving CompuPro technical manual is dated Oct 1984 (a Dec 1984 printing is also listed).
- CPUCPU 8085/88 (with swap port at 0FDh) or CPU Z — per the Oct 1984 manual
- BoardsDisk 1 or Disk 1A at 0C0h (J17 jumpered); System Support 1, or Interfacer 3/4 at 10h / Interfacer 1/2 at 0 as console
- Min RAM64K in the first 64K page
- Versions2.2H, 2.2K (2-disk set), 2.2N, 2.2Q, 2.2NZ, 2.2LD (G&G Engineering build), 2.2LM (M-Drive System Master), 2.2NZ-agn
- DistinctiveDisk 1 ROM (≤256 bytes) loads the first four sectors and disables itself; the 512-byte BOOT at 0100h loads the CP/M loader, sends SPECIFY to all FDCs and initialises serial ports; the CBIOS (sectors 3–26) deblocks 256/512/1024-byte MFM disks; M-Drive/H (up to 4 MB) auto-sizes as drive M:; hard-disk builds exist for Disk 2
Dunfield hosts CompuPro CP/M 2.2 for Disk1A (IMD, 285K). The SIMH/Schorn CompuPro Collection carries 2.2Q (85/88, by Viasyn) and 2.2NZ with 8× M-Drive/H + Disk2/M20 — SIMH-adapted copies of real masters. The Maslin list catalogues 2.2H, 2.2N, 2.2K disks 1–2 and 2.2LD (catalogue only — see caveats).
CP/M-86
Image survives
CompuPro’s port of DRI CP/M-86 1.1 (BDOS 2.2). Technical manual editions run July 1982, Jan 1983 and March 1984 — the last adding Disk 3 hard-disk support. A physical master set is labelled “CP/M 86 1.1, Version 1R, Disk 1 & 2 of 2, Single Sided – 1024 B/S”, serial C86-0272-1854.
- CPUCPU 86/87 (8086 at 8/10 MHz, 8087 socket, ROM-less 80130) or the 8088 side of the CPU 8085/88; later the 816/F’s iAPX 286
- BoardsDisk 1 rev F+ or Disk 1A, J17 in the “B” position for the 86-only boot; System Support 1 needs the GO 86 EPROM (U16) to boot CP/M-86
- Min RAM128K
- Versions1.1PA / 1.1PAA, 1.1PB, 1.1PD, plus the “1R” master set
- DistinctiveShares the TMXBIOS codebase with CP/M 8-16 — one source, a CPM816 assembly flag switches the sign-on between “CP/M-86” and “CP/M 8-16”. Configured for Disk 1/1A, Disk 2/3, M-Drive/H as M:, optional interrupt-driven console I/O
Dunfield: CompuPro CP/M 86 for Disk1A in two copies (IMD 330K and 335K), plus the CPU-8085/86 System Disks (IMD 850K) and CPU-8086/87 System Disks (IMD 940K) bundles. Maslin lists 1.1PAA and 1.1PD; SIMH includes 1.1PB.
CP/M 8-16
Image survives
Data Decisions (Feb 1984) says it verbatim: “CP/M 8-16 and MP/M 8-16 are proprietary versions of Digital Research’s CP/M-86 and MP/M-86.” 8-16 was layered on the CP/M-86 1.1 base — there’s even a 4-page CP/M 8-16 Supplement for CP/M 86 (Nov 1983) — and the one version attested everywhere is 1.1R. File type picks the processor: CP/M-80 .COM programs run on the 8085, CP/M-86 .CMD programs on the 8088, so an 8-bit software library carries over intact.
- CPUThe CPU 8085/88 — a single board carrying both an 8085 and an 8088. Not a CPU-Z + CPU 86/87 pair: no source shows 8-16 sold that way. (The CPU 86/87 manual does describe an 86/87 + 8-bit slave as giving “equivalent operation to our CPU 8085/88 dual processor board” for MP/M 8-16, and SPU/SPUZ slaves are the later form of that idea.)
- BoardsDisk 1/1A, System Support 1, Interfacer 3/4 — as for CP/M-86
- Min RAM128K · Bundled on System 816/A (single-user), /B and /C
- ModeSingle-user, single-tasking (Data Decisions, explicitly)
- DistinctiveTMXBIOS sign-on: “CompuPro Systems CP/M 8-16 vers 1.1R” with memory size, TPA base, disk types and M-Drive/H count
SIMH/Schorn’s CP/M 86 package (4,826K ZIP) boots “CompuPro Systems CP/M 8-16 vers 1.1R”, BIOS configured for memory drive, 4 floppies and two hard drives, with transfer tools and both technical manuals in PDF. Bitsavers holds a 5.25″ set, CPM8-16_T-2.zip (1.3M; the index states no version — “T-2” is part of the archived filename). The TMXBIOS source survives at deramp.
MP/M 8-16
Image survives
CompuPro’s proprietary multi-user OS, implemented for CompuPro by G&G Engineering. The period announcement (Information Display, May 1982): “enables as many as eight users to simultaneously run 8-bit and 16-bit applications programs. Users have 62 kB of program space available to them, compared to 48 kB allowed under MP/M.” Note the architecture: the kernel is MP/M-86 2.1, but the multi-user engine is the 8-bit MP/M side doing CP/M functions — the 16-bit side is single-stream. That quirk is exactly why Concurrent DOS later displaced it.
- CPUCPU 8085/88 (8085 + 8088 on one board)
- Min RAM192K (Disk 1A manual)
- UsersUp to 8 at the OS ceiling. On the packaged System 816/C, Data Decisions says 3 users in the basic configuration, recommended maximum 7 workstations — both figures are period-sourced; they aren’t the same claim
- VersionsSurviving build labelled MP/M 8-16 V2.1F. Manuals: MP/M 8/16 Technical Manual & Installation, Sep 1982 and June 1983
SIMH/Schorn’s “Concurrent CP/M 86 and MP/M 86” package contains “MP/M-86 2.1 [20 July 82] (CompuPro MP/M 8-16 V2.1F)”. The Maslin list’s CPMPM816 (“CompuPro 8/16 MP/M @ 19.2K baud”, SSDD) proves a distinct System Master existed — but the Maslin media themselves are not online (see caveats).
MP/M-86
Sold, no image
DRI MP/M-86 2.0 (Sep 1981) / 2.1 (20 July 1982): multi-user, multitasking CP/M-86 where every user runs 16-bit programs. CompuPro bundled it on the System 816/D (8086 + optional 8087, 512K, M-Drive/H standard) and the 816/F (iAPX 286), per the Data Decisions bundling table.
- CPUCPU 86/87 (8086/8087); 816/F’s iAPX 286
- ModeMulti-user, multitasking — 16-bit programs only
No standalone CompuPro MP/M-86 boot image was identified in Dunfield, bitsavers or the SIMH packages — it survives only in its MP/M 8-16 build form. Generic DRI MP/M-86 file sets exist but lack the CompuPro XIOS/BIOS.
Concurrent CP/M 8-16
Image survives
DRI evolved MP/M-86 2.1 into Concurrent CP/M-86 3.0 (BDOS 3.0, late 1982, virtual screens), then 3.1 (BDOS 3.1; optional PC-MODE DOS emulator Dec 1983, shipped 21 Feb 1984). CompuPro sold that generation under its dual-processor branding as Concurrent CP/M 8-16 — attested by the SIMH package label itself.
- CPUCPU 8085/88 or CPU 8086/286 — loaders ship per processor (see Concurrent DOS)
- ModeMulti-user and multi-tasking: several programs on one console via virtual consoles, several consoles sharing the machine
SIMH/Schorn package: “Concurrent CP/M-86 3.1, Digital Research 1983 (CompuPro Concurrent CP/M 8-16)”.
Concurrent DOS 8-16
Image survives
When DRI renamed the DOS-compatible product Concurrent DOS, CompuPro followed: Concurrent DOS 8-16 (a compound trademark of DRI and Viasyn) runs from 3.1x in Apr 1985 through Version 5 (guide Apr 1987) and a Version 5.0 reference in the Disk 1B manual (Dec 1988) — by then the company is Viasyn, and the OS also targets CPU 286 / System Support 2 systems. Later Viasyn machines (286/80, 10 Plus) shipped CDOS 816 as the standard OS. The shell can be built with the PC module (SHELL.RSP — runs DOS programs) or without (SHELL.NPC); system generation is GENCCPM with CompuPro’s COMPUPRO.IN, producing CCPM.SYS with a custom XIOS whose source shipped.
- CPULoaders per processor and drive size: LDRCCPM5.88 / LDRCCPM8.88 (CPU 8085/88), LDRCCPM5.86 / LDRCCPM8.86 (CPU 8086/286)
- BoardsDisk 1/1A with two 8″ DSDD drives; Disk 2 or Disk 3 hard disk (Quantum Q520/Q540/Q2080, Seagate ST506, Fujitsu 20/40 MB); Interfacer 3/4 “for connecting up to 14 users”
- Min RAM256K — leaving ~112K free for one user, one console, no networking; ~4K per additional console; networking ~64K
- SPUZWith SPUZ Z80 slave boards (8 MHz Z80H, own 64K/256K + dual serial, up to 16 per system) each 8-bit user gets a real processor instead of timesharing the 8085 — “Supported by CompuPro Concurrent DOS 8-16” (s100computers)
- Versions3.1x (Apr 1985), 4.1 (physical set labelled CDOS 8-16 4.1D-2), 5.0 / V5 (Apr 1987)
Bitsavers 5.25″: CCPM1–CCPM6.IMD.gz (six Concurrent disks), CDOS 4.1 backup sets A and B with label scans, plus CDOS_8-16_SRC_4.1C.zip (962K) and XIOS 4.1 source disks. 8″ sets circulate via a VCFed thread (22DISK “COM9” format; the poster notes file damage on that set — CCPMF85.SYS and MEM.CON on disk 1). Name-collision caution: bitsavers’ CompuPro 10 / 10 Plus CDOS zips are for the non-S-100 machines, not the 816.
CP/M-68K
1.1 only
CompuPro’s port of DRI CP/M-68K (1982; features “similar to CP/M 2.2” per Data Decisions) for the CPU 68K board. The System 816/E bundled CP/M-68K with mapFORTH and a C compiler from 1983–84. There is no CompuPro MP/M-68K — this line stayed single-user, single-tasking, and 68000 binaries only; 8-bit programs need an SPUZ/8085 slave under the later OSs.
- CPUCPU 68K: 68000 at 8 MHz (assembled & tested) or 10 MHz (CSC), optional 68451 MMU socket, 24-bit addressing, up to 16K onboard ROM; System Support 1 can provide vectored interrupts with a documented board modification
- BoardsFamily-standard Disk 1/1A (floppy), Disk 2/3 (hard), Interfacer 3/4 / System Support 1. 816/E package: 256K RAM, dual 1.2M 8″ drives or 40M hard disk, 1.5M M-Drive/H, 4 serial ports
- Versions1.0 (a Westico dealer/channel-labelled disk — treat as the earliest channel build), 1.1 (the archived System Master), Revision 1.3
- Rev 1.3S-100 Journal, Spring 1986: “a new improved version, Revision 1.3, of CP/M-68K. The new revision includes a full C compiler (with floating point) and supports their SPUZ Z-80 slave processor.” A $125 upgrade — call for an RMA and send your old disks back. No CompuPro-specific 1.2 was found; 1.2 exists only as a generic DRI release
Bitsavers holds the only CompuPro 68K master set: CompuPro_68K_System_Masters.zip (2.9M, dated 2022-11-17). The cpm.z80.de binary list separately catalogues a 5-disk RAW/IMG distribution of “CP/M-68K version 1.1 binaries” (307K) — listed right alongside generic DRI 1.2 (569K) and 1.3 (655K) file sets, which are program files with no CompuPro CBIOS and will not boot a CompuPro 68K system as-is. No archived CompuPro CP/M-68K 1.2 or 1.3 boot image was found in bitsavers, Dunfield, the Maslin list, SIMH, s100computers, archive.org or retroarchive. On “1.3 was the last sold”: it is the latest version documented anywhere (Spring 1986) and nothing later surfaces — consistent with all evidence, though no source states it was final in so many words.
Two names with no CompuPro product found
Both come up constantly in listings and forum posts. Here’s what the evidence actually supports.
CP/M Plus / CP/M 3.0 — no CompuPro product found
DRI’s banked-memory CP/M 3.0 (1983) never appears in CompuPro’s OS lists — not in the Feb 1984 System 816 profile, and no CompuPro CP/M Plus manual, price-list entry or System Master turned up in bitsavers, s100computers, Dunfield, the Maslin list or journal searches.
What does exist: a third-party CP/M 3 modular BIOS module — DISK.ASM, “compupro disk1 driver for cp/m+”, by Dick Lieber, dated 22 May 1983, Disk 1 at port 0C0h. It proves a CP/M+ BIOS was written for CompuPro Disk 1 hardware in 1983 — by an individual, as a loose source file, not a CompuPro distribution. And the SIMH site’s “CP/M Plus” package is generic CP/M Plus for the SIMH Altair (with a CompuPro CP/M 2.2NZ disk bundled in the same ZIP).
Survival: no bootable CompuPro CP/M Plus image is known. Confidence is high there was no marketed CompuPro CP/M Plus; an unadvertised OEM build can’t be proved not to have existed from web sources.
Source: Lieber DISK.ASM (cpmarchives)
MP/M-80 / MP/M II — advertised, no standalone product found
DRI’s multi-user 8-bit line (MP/M II 2.0, July 1981; 2.1, Jan 1982) needs bank-switched RAM and a custom XIOS. The strongest CompuPro evidence is a Feb–Mar 1982 ad in PC: The Independent Guide to IBM Computers: “CompuPro’s 85/88 CPU runs CP/M 80, 86, MP/M II and MP/M 86.”
But no CompuPro MP/M-80 / MP/M II manual, System Master or catalogue entry was found anywhere. By the System 816 launch (first deliveries Sep 1982), multi-user 8-bit work had been folded into MP/M 8-16 — which is where CompuPro’s effort, via G&G Engineering, demonstrably went. Treat any “CompuPro MP/M” offer as MP/M 8-16 unless a seller can show a Z80/8085-only System Master label.
Survival: no standalone bootable CompuPro MP/M-80 / MP/M II image is known. Whether the 1982 ad referred to a CompuPro-mastered disk or a resold DRI/G&G build — and any version number — could not be established.
Also sold — but not CP/M variants
- MS-DOS for the 8085/88 and 86/87 systems was advertised by CompuPro in the same 1982 ad series (“runs CP/M 80 & 86 or MS-DOS”) — a real CompuPro offering, just not a CP/M variant.
- DR Net / CP/NET — CompuPro sold DR Net 1.1A (a physical disk survives in a private haul) as the networking layer over MP/M / Concurrent systems. An add-on, not an OS.
- TurboDOS on CompuPro-816-based systems was sold by third parties (Genesys/Illuminated, per S-100 Journal, Summer 1985) — not CompuPro-branded.
- Gifford Computer Systems (the G&G Engineering lineage) sold its own 8/16 systems on CompuPro hardware with its own MP/M-86 packaging — period ads (“we invented 8-16 operating systems”) explain many “Gifford MP/M 8-16” references. Same G&G OS technology CompuPro sold; the branding is Gifford’s.
Reading the archive claims honestly
- Zip/IMD contents weren’t inspected. No files were downloaded for this research, so archive contents are reported from directory names, catalogue descriptions and period documentation. The bitsavers 68K zip is presumed 1.1 because 1.1 is the only CompuPro 68K version any other source shows archived — the directory listing itself is silent on version. The same applies to CPM8-16_T-2.zip and the CCPM disk set.
- Maslin entries are a catalogue, not a download. The Maslin list is a Walnut Creek CD republication of sysdisk.txt. Per cctalk (Al Kossow, Nov 2012), CHM retrieved Don Maslin’s media but could not locate the disk images the list describes — so Maslin-listed disks (2.2H, CPMPM816, …) are “known to have existed / distributed by mail”, not “downloadable today”, except where the same build also appears at Dunfield, SIMH or bitsavers.
- Letter revisions are undated. The archives don’t date individual letter revisions (2.2H/K/N/Q/NZ, 1.1PA/PB/PD); only manual editions and the 1.1R / V2.1F / 4.1 / 5.0 builds are dated by documents.
- Two bitsavers manual directories (pdf/compupro/CPM_MPM/ and pdf/compupro/Viasyn/) couldn’t be fetched during research; their contents were partly reconstructed from Herb Johnson’s holdings list and the offsite bitsavers mirror. A direct listing would likely add manual filenames and dates, not new OS variants.
Principal sources
- Data Decisions, CompuPro System 816 profile, Feb 1984 — OS list, model/bundling table, 8-16 definitions. dragonsweb.org (bitsavers mirror)
- CompuPro, CP/M 2.2 Technical Manual and Installation, Oct 1984. archive.org
- Bitsavers bits index, Compupro (68K masters, 5″ CCPM/CDOS/CPM8-16, XIOS source). bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Compupro · 5inch/
- Dave Dunfield, System/Install Disks — CompuPro IMD entries. dunfield.classiccmp.org
- Don Maslin system-disk list (Walnut Creek CD). cpmarchives.classiccmp.org
- Peter Schorn SIMH Altair page — CompuPro Collection, CP/M 8-16 1.1R, Concurrent CP/M 8-16 3.1, MP/M 8-16 V2.1F. cpmarchives mirror
- S-100 Journal Vol.1 No.3, Spring 1986 — CP/M-68K Revision 1.3, C compiler with floating point, SPUZ support, $125 upgrade (via archive.org text, cited in the research report).
- Viasyn/CompuPro, Concurrent DOS 8-16 Installation Guide 3.1x, Apr 1985. bitsavers offsite mirror
- Unofficial CP/M binary list — CP/M-68K 1.1 5-disk RAW distribution vs generic 1.2/1.3 binaries. gaby.de/cpm
