BabyBlue: CP/M on the IBM PC

This is an actual image someone put online of running BabyBlue on a PC

The
Product

BabyBlue is a computer-within-a-computer card that lets CP/M applications run on the IBM-PC

This card was critical in the transition from the very robust CP/M world of thousands of software titles to the then revolutionary IBM-PC running under the first commercially available version of MS-DOS. It allowed the user to insert their original CP/M floppy disks and have the apps work on the IBM-PC.

BabyBlue was produced by MicroLog, a startup spun off of the main CP/M porting work provided by Lifeboat Associates.

This is a link showing slightly newer version of the card and someone’s recent use of it. https://retrocmp.de/hardware/babyblue2/babyblue2.htm

This is a PDF (PDF wasn’t invented back then though) of the BabyBlue user’s manual that someone scanned. (I do have printed copy somewhere though)

The
Work

My boss at Lifeboat and I left to start MicroLog with the specific purpose of building this card. Between my boss, one other engineer and I produced the hardware and software for this. (I have a hardware degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering).

I vaguely recall working on that manual you see.

My boss was a close personal friend of Bill Gates. Bill, unsolicited gave us the source code to MS-DOS to help us along (although I do recall that we didn’t actually need it at that point)

Of course this product was a stop-gap product needed before the PC/MS-DOS industry took off. After that we did a number of other hardware/software products, including a ‘teletext’ (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel) PC-card that allowed this early ‘internet like service’ that overtook France to run on a PC.