CP/M-386 – CP/M for 386 protected mode, derived from CP/M-68K | Hacker News

A Hacker News discussion explains that CP/M-386 for 386 protected mode was derived from CP/M-68K.

The key reason was that CP/M-68K was largely written in C, making it easier to adapt to a new architecture.

Older CP/M branches like CP/M-86 and CP/M-80 were more assembly- or PL/M-heavy, so they were harder to reuse.

The example shows how implementation language and portability shaped which legacy OS codebase was practical to carry forward.