Load SuperCalc

Chris DavisFun Things To Do

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program, but was not available for CP/M. SuperCalc filled this void. It was originally bundled with WordStar, and became very popular for CP/M and eventually ported over to MS-DOS. It survived into the early 90’s when Microsoft Excel became the defacto spreadsheet program.

Requirements:
MicroSD Card with Altair disk images (available here.)
Terminal software (Putty is highly recommended.)

Step-by-Step:

  1. Stop whatever the Altair is doing – raise “Stop”, then raise “Reset”.
  2. Mount emulated disk 6 in drive 0 – switch 12 up, switch 2 up, switch 1 up (all other switches down).
  3. AUX2 down to load disk.
    Terminal will say “[mounted disk ‘DISK06.DSK: SuperCalc II (CP/M program)’ in drive 0]”
  4. To run bootable disk – switch 3 up (all others down).
  5. AUX1 down. This will install the Disk Boot ROM and boot disk 0.
  6. Terminal will display
    62K CP/M
    Version 2.2mits (07/28/80)
    Copyright 1980 by Burcon Inc.
    A>
  7. Type “INSTALL”.
  8. Answer “Y” to proceed.
  9. Type “A:SC2”.
  10. Accept the defaults, and exit the installation.
  11. Type “SC2”.
  12. You are now running SuperCalc II.