Installing 22nice CP/M Environment in DOSBox-X Hosted by ReactOS

Demonstration of installing CP/M environment 22nice by Sydex, of Eugene, Oregon, on DOSBox-X in ReactOS. Although it was done in ReactOS, the same basic process would work on any system that can run DOSBox successfully, including any other Windows NT type system.

Once started, it remains as TSR (terminate and stay resident) program running in DOS, and any time a CP/M program is invoked at the command prompt, 22nice will attempt to load it. Its unnecessary to type the file extension at the end when starting the program. Just the file name by itself without the extension will do, as demonstrated in the video.

Because CP/M programs usually have a .COM file extension, Sydex recommends copying and renaming them with a .cpm extension, in order to avoid trouble with DOS attempting to run an CP/M executable on its own. Also, before running the CP/M program, its recommended to run the utility progam GENCOM, which generates information for 22nice about how to load that specific program. You could put GENCOM in the path, and then be able to run it anywhere you have stored or located a new CP/M program.

The demonstration program here was an implementation of Microsoft Basic. Unlike other CP/M programs, in OBASIC CTRL+C does not return to the CP/M system, and you have to type the command 'SYSTEM' to return. Running with 22nice, the SYSTEM command in Microsoft Basic returns you to a DOS prompt.

22nice was originally shareware from the late 1980s/early 1990s. This appears to be the website for the company that made it - https://www.sydex.com/

CP/M was originally an 8-bit operating system developed in the 1980s by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, inspired in part by older operating systems like those that ran on DEC systems, and later contributing to inspiration of the development of modern DOS systems as we know them today. Major operating system of early microcomputers with an extensive software library, eventually succeeded by DOS. CP/M lives on today as the basis of DR DOS and operating systems like Real/32.