The discussion centers on various methods for playing Zork on modern systems, highlighting a Go-based CP/M emulator that uses local filesystems instead of disk images. Participants also share alternative tools like frotz and RunCPM, while noting performance issues such as CPU throttling in some emulators.
22 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4MockbaTheBorg
RunCPM
C2021–2024
MockbaTheBorg / RunCPM
RunCPM
RunCPM is a multi-platform, portable, Z80 CP/M 2.2 emulator.
4Distinct people
4Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
512GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
RunCPM is a multi-platform, portable, Z80 CP/M 2.2 emulator.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:38:16 PM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year4 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2021-05-01 19:44:53 UTC to 2024-09-08 15:32:36 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
1 sourcesREretrac·May 1, 2021
There are no doubt some systems still running under emulation doing the same thing as they were 40 years ago. The software might even be maintained. But the truth for decades now. CP/M is dead. Long live CP/M!
It's just hobbyists now. One hacker ported his game to a Kaypro under CP/M a couple years ago: http://www.chrisfenton.com/dd9-kaypro-edition/
Much of the focus is on porting CP/M to whatever new or old Z80 system someone has built or found. Speaking of which... CP/Mish is an attempt to bring all the free software CP/M tools together. It is to CP/M as Linux is to UNIX, or FreeDOS is to MS-DOS. A mostly complete, improved, libre reimplementation: https://github.com/davidgiven/cpmish
RunCPM is a CP/M Z80 virtual machine under modern OSes for development etc. https://github.com/MockbaTheBorg/RunCPM
In terms of recent new progr
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ams, here are some pointers if you wanted to write something yourself:
Also written by the maintainer of the CP/Mish project (and not CP/M specific) is Cowgol. Alpha quality. But it's a self-hosted Pascal/Ada-like language with compiler. Runs on 8-bit systems, at least theoretically. It is written, of course, entirely in Cowgol: https://github.com/davidgiven/cowgol
Millfork is another new language which targets CP/M systems, among others. It's a whole-program optimizing cross-compiler for a language somewhat lower level than C, with properties that make it very nice to compile for 8-bit systems like no recursion, and no automatic promotion to 16-bit integers in type handling: https://github.com/KarolS/millfork
There's some work on a Z80 target for FreePascal. I don't think there's CP/M specific support, so there's a project idea: https://wiki.freepascal.org/Z80
SDCC supports the platform with C surprisingly well. I wouldn't call it rock-solid but compared to the above toys it is an industrial quality compiler for the Z80. In fact, C seems to be the most common actual language for hobbyist and the little remaining serious Z80 development, probably ahead of assembly. If it just reads and writes the terminal and can fit in about 60 KB, then a port is probably straightforward.