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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.

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    – Chenmunka ♦
    Commented Mar 7, 2023 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
    Commented Mar 14, 2023 at 1:02
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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
    Commented Apr 7, 2023 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
    Commented Apr 8, 2023 at 0:13
  • CP/M was also used in embedded applications so it is possible something like an old CNC machine is still running it.
    – Brian
    Commented Apr 11, 2023 at 13:21

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

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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
    Commented Apr 11, 2023 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
    Commented Apr 15, 2023 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
    Commented Apr 17, 2023 at 1:18
  • @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
    Commented Apr 18, 2023 at 9:02
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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
    Commented Apr 20, 2023 at 8:21

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