MP/M-80 The 8-bit system required a
8080 (or
Z80) CPU and a minimum of 32
KB of
RAM to run, but this left little memory for user applications. In order to support reasonable setups, MP/M allowed for memory to be switched in and out of the machine's "real memory" area. So for instance a program might be loaded into a "bank" of RAM that was not addressable by the
CPU, and when it was time for the program to run that bank of RAM would be "switched" to appear in low memory (typically the lower 32 or 48 KB) and thus become visible to the OS. This technique, known as
bank switching was subsequently added to the single user version of CP/M with version 3.0. One of the primary uses of MP/M, perhaps to the surprise of DRI, was as a "power user" version of CP/M for a single user. The ability to run several programs at the same time and address large amounts of memory made the system worth the extra price.
MP/M II 2.0 added file sharing capabilities in 1981,
MP/M 8-16 MP/M 8-16 (sometimes also referred to as
MP/M-8/16) was
CompuPro's name for a combination of the multi-user 16-bit MP/M-86 to perform single-user, single-stream CP/M functions, along with multi-user, multi-tasking 8-bit MP/M operations running on the
multi-processor . Later on, this system was also able to run
Concurrent DOS 3.1.
MP/M-286 In 1982, Digital Research announced plans to develop
MP/M-286 to take advantage of the 16-bit
Intel 80286's new memory management and protection features to run existing MP/M-86 and CP/M-86 applications. This was apparently never published "as is", but was further developed into
Concurrent CP/M-286, which seems to have formed the basis for the later
Concurrent DOS 286 in 1985 and
FlexOS 286 in 1986. ==Commands==