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I understand that there is a great deal of mainframe-era enterprise software that is still in active use, if not on the original hardware then in emulated environments. Its users keep it running because it still works for its intended use cases and because the cost of reimplementing it in a modern language, on modern hardware and operating systems, is therefore not justified. Similarly, some businesses continue to use MS-DOS and OS/2 today, despite them being long ago EOL'd by Microsoft and IBM, respectively. There are apparently enough active DOS and OS/2 users to support at least one company providing third-party legacy support.

Is the same true of CP/M? That is, are there any enterprise users that continue to maintain and run CP/M installations for their original purposes? (Note that I am not talking about running CP/M as a retrocomputing hobby or as museum piece.) Wikipedia claims that, besides vintage computer enthusiasts, there exist "some small commercial businesses, still developing and supporting computer platforms that use CP/M (mostly 2.2) as the host operating system", but no examples or references are provided.

Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
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Psychonaut
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  • Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed. – Chenmunka Mar 07 '23 at 17:29
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    If by "today" could mean "15..uh..18 years ago" then that (~2003) was the last time I saw an ATM with a green-on-black CRT in the wild, and I understand those kinds of machines tended to run CP/M. – Dai Mar 14 '23 at 01:02
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    Note that mainframes are notorious for being backward compatible so you can simply keep on buying new boxes to run your stuff on. None of the modern cpu architectures are compatible with the 8080 or z80 so it requires an extra effort to run on modern hardware. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Apr 07 '23 at 20:49
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    @Dai, I'm not sure CP/M was ever used on ATMs, a lot tended to run OS/2 and, later, Windows when it became more secure. I may be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time :-) – paxdiablo Apr 08 '23 at 00:13
  • CP/M was also used in embedded applications so it is possible something like an old CNC machine is still running it. – Brian Apr 11 '23 at 13:21
  • Maybe in in a fire control center installation - such installations are very long living ... the old installation that I suspected to run CP/M is already gone. Alas. – Johann Klasek Apr 19 '23 at 19:21

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No. The removed references from Wikipedia's CP/M article referred to hobbyist computers:

scruss
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  • It's hard to prove a negative, but I'll accept this answer as long as nobody else finds evidence of a CP/M system in commercial use. – Psychonaut Apr 11 '23 at 14:25
  • There is CP/M in commercial use. Some of the file conversion/recovery companies still have such systems for converting legacy disks (notably 3" ones). I'm not sure that use case is in the spirit of the original question however. – Alan Cox Apr 15 '23 at 23:54
  • @AlanCox - there may still be, but that's hardly enterprise. Also, with the rise of devices such as the GreaseWeazle to read legacy disk formats, keeping old systems running for the occasional customer makes less sense. While I can't prove a negative, I can (and did) prove that the Wikipedia links were to hobbyist projects. – scruss Apr 17 '23 at 01:18
  • @scruss tools like GreaseWeazle still require you can drive the physical media and then process it. So there are people today still running Amstrad PCW machines for disk and format conversion because it's far simpler and cheaper to turn o the Amstrad than build a specialist 3" disk rig and emulator setup. But as I also said above it's not in the spirt of the original question – Alan Cox Apr 18 '23 at 09:02
  • @scruss also the wikipedia claim is correct but it's not the question I think the original poster was asking. There is a commercial business around CP/M and there are people doing CP/M work as a business - but that business is enabling hobby retrocomputing - RC2014 is a business and trademark for example. – Alan Cox Apr 18 '23 at 09:05
  • @AlanCox - we read the OP's question differently, then. The links I gave were from Wikipedia's history, being the references for the "some small commercial businesses". There are no enterprise users, it's fairly safe to say: cottage disk conversion industries would strain anyone's definition of enterprise computing – scruss Apr 19 '23 at 01:11
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    My OP mentions systems running for their original purposes, by which I meant to exclude things like data recovery and migration services. (That said, if there are conversion/migration companies that process CP/M disks, maybe they know of customers who still use CP/M! Maybe someone can ask them?) I did mention enterprise users in the text but would be happy to count small business users. – Psychonaut Apr 20 '23 at 08:21