Ohio Scientific C1P
John Boyle
haven't seen mention of this fine old specimen.
I couldn't afford an Apple II or a TRS-80 in high school and passed on
my girlfriend's father's hex keypad, 6 (or 8) digit display board only
"computer", but I thought this was the deal of life:
Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
6502 Microprocessor.
8K Basic in ROM.
8K RAM.
Cassette tape storage.
RF converter for my old B&W TV.
Photocopied documentation (Couldn't read the machine language sections).
And how I drooled over the upgrade to a FLOPPY drive and how the bigger
models had those awesome 8" floppys (Those models were the size of 19"
test equipment racks).
Anyway I think my mom tossed it one spring cleaning. It probably would have
been worth some money today....
Anyone else have one of those babys?
su...@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
jbo...@vnet.ibm.com (John Boyle) writes:
>I couldn't afford an Apple II or a TRS-80 in high school and passed on
>my girlfriend's father's hex keypad, 6 (or 8) digit display board only
>"computer", but I thought this was the deal of life:
>
>Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
>
>
I didn't have one, but I sure wished I had one; I was in the same boat,
couldn't afford anything else and it sure looked like a good deal. I used
to send away for the literature and drool at the brochure. I live in
Pittsburgh, and I had cousins that lived in Cleveland, OH and on the way
we'd pass by the then big, Ohio Scientific Plant. Don't think it's there any
more. Any body got any history on Ohio Scientific the company? I know it
started out as a husband and and wife team.
I eventually ended up getting an Atari 800 when they came out!
-Sunil
pki...@csupomona.edu
[ deletion about the... ]
> Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
>
> 6502 Microprocessor.
> 8K Basic in ROM.
> 8K RAM.
> Cassette tape storage.
> RF converter for my old B&W TV.
> Photocopied documentation (Couldn't read the machine language sections).
>
> And how I drooled over the upgrade to a FLOPPY drive and how the bigger
> models had those awesome 8" floppys (Those models were the size of 19"
> test equipment racks).
Didn't we all? And don't forget the 'printer upgrade kit', a large
(12'x12'x6'?) box with a large 'printer' assembly on top. Printhead about the
size of a medium-sized apple, and don't forget the *three-inch-wide* paper!
I never got this beauty, but believe me, when I resurrected the beast in high
school (simple robotics controller), I wanted to get into contact with them to
see about some of those peripherals...
> Anyway I think my mom tossed it one spring cleaning. It probably would have
> been worth some money today....
>
> Anyone else have one of those babys?
YES! (And it still works!) Do you realize that you're the only other
person I know of who has even *heard* of this beast?
>
--
Grimm
"And don't forget the 21-command Basic interpreter! ...Oh, yeah... you didn't."
---
Patrick Innes
pki...@vmsa.is.csupomona.edu
[ .Sig file under construction. ]
Kip Crosby
In article <2rbdsu$k...@sernews.raleigh.ibm.com>, John Boyle (jbo...@vnet.ibm.com) writes:
>Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
>
>6502 Microprocessor.
>8K Basic in ROM.
>8K RAM.
>Cassette tape storage.
>RF converter for my old B&W TV.
>Photocopied documentation (Couldn't read the machine language sections).
>
>
>Anyway I think my mom tossed it one spring cleaning. It probably would have
>been worth some money today....
Haddock's _Collector's Guide_ lists the IP at $125 to $175, meaning
for the bare machine. Bootable, with peripherals and docs, it
might be worth about twice that.
Note that this is a Challenger {Roman numeral I}P. About three
years later -- 1982 rather than 1979 -- OSI confusingly released a
model called the Challenger _C_{Arabic numeral 1}P, which is not
as valuable. Great historical significance, though.
__________________________________________
Kip Crosby c...@chac.win.net
Computer History Association of California
"History is what you make it...."
DoN. Nichols
>In article <2rbdsu$k...@sernews.raleigh.ibm.com>, jbo...@vnet.ibm.com (John Boyle) writes:
>
>[ deletion about the... ]
>
>> Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
>>
>> Anyone else have one of those babys?
>
> YES! (And it still works!) Do you realize that you're the only other
>person I know of who has even *heard* of this beast?
Oh, I've heard of it, and have issues of Byte (and probably
Killobaud) with ads for it, but by then I already had my Altair 680b, and
was working my way towards a SWTP 6800 with SSB's disk controller card and
OS.
As I remember, the larger early OSI machines were three-CPU types.
You could select between 8080 (or was that Z80), 6502, and 6800. I think
that it always booted under one of those, and you had commands to select the
others once booted. They also were the first to be offering hard disks.
*Big* hard disks - as in 14" platters. I don't think that the capacity was
anything to write home about these days, but it was impressive for a micro
then.
--
Email: <dnic...@d-and-d.com> | ...!uunet!ceilidh!dnichols
Donald Nichols (DoN.) | Voice (Days): (703) 704-2280 (Eves): (703) 938-4564
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
Stephen Hepner
>Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
ave
>been worth some money today....
>Anyone else have one of those babys?
*grin* my dad used to sell the things! I think that we now have 4 or 5 of
the OSI systems. Unfortunately they arent worth all that much anymore....
stephen
she...@hera.manchester.edu
Stephen Hepner
>In Article <2rbdsu$k...@sernews.raleigh.ibm.com>
>jbo...@vnet.ibm.com (John Boyle) writes:
>>I couldn't afford an Apple II or a TRS-80 in high school and passed on
>>my girlfriend's father's hex keypad, 6 (or 8) digit display board only
>>"computer", but I thought this was the deal of life:
>>
>>Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
>>
>>Anyone else have one of those babys?
>>
>I didn't have one, but I sure wished I had one; I was in the same boat,
>couldn't afford anything else and it sure looked like a good deal. I use
>to send away for the literature and drool at the brochure. I live in
>Pittsburgh, and I had cousins that lived in Cleveland, OH and on the way
>we'd pass by the then big, Ohio Scientific Plant. Don't think it's there
any
>more. Any body got any history on Ohio Scientific the company? I know it
>started out as a husband and and wife team.
>I eventually ended up getting an Atari 800 when they came out!
> -Sunil
I dont personally know the full history os OSI but you can contact
ae...@dayton.wright.edu (John Hepner). He kept track of them for quite a
while. The last I heard was they were bought out and were going with the
intel 286 CPU on the same 8"x10" boards used in their big systems. SCSI
controllers also....
Our first OSI was built in 1980 and had a mechanical teletype with paper
tape reader. The thing still works and (I think) still have the programs
on tape. We (fortunately) found someone who would actually buy that
teletype some time later. We quickly upgraded to the better systems when
they came out...:)
Wonder if any of the modern computers will be able to run for 14 years?
stephen
she...@hera.manchester.edu
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by she...@nyx.cs.du.edu (Stephen Hepner):
>
> Wonder if any of the modern computers will be able to run for 14 years?
Well, I have a machine made in 1975 that's still running (a PDP-8/F), and
I hope to get some older hardware restored to working condition fairly
soon. 14 year old hardware is young stuff!
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Kevin Marlowe
>>Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P:
>>
>>Anyone else have one of those babys?
>>
sophomore in high school. I remember spending endless hours at it, even skip-
ping other classes to code on it (I nearly failed Calculus because of it, but
since the Calc teacher was also the CS teacher, he only gave me a "D"...).
A friend and I wrote a version of "Breakout" (where you move a box around the
screen trying not to get closed-in by someone else's box) in assembler... and
we cursed that #@$^% cassette many times. I wrote my first set of user docs
for it, too (I still have them)... there's a section in there about what
to do if the screen fills with garbage when you turn it on... did all of them
do that?
The best part was the "reset" button on the 8" disk drive case that did
absolutely nothing (it was the same case as the CPU)...
Ah, nostalgia. To think we'll think of Suns in this light someday. Thanks for
the memories... -KLM
_____________________________________________________________________________
Kevin L. Marlowe Computer Sciences Corporation
k.l.m...@larc.nasa.gov NASA Langley Research Center
Voice/Fax: (804) 865-1725 Hampton, VA 23666
Bill Sudbrink
I have an OSI C3, full upright rack, two eight inch floppies, ten Meg
hard disk. It won't boot anymore. I think the boot image on the hard
disk has faded. There were no utilities on it to format a bootable
floppy, so I'm stuck. I have the printed OS docs. Does anybody out
there have a working copy of the OS (I think it's OS65VU).
Bill
Bill Sudbrink
Yup, I've got two. One has the upgraded ROM with the full screen
editor made by... well I can't remember now, maybe I'll go find
the docs after I post this. I also installed the RS-232 and square
wave ports. The other is factory original.
Frank McConnell
>Anyone else have one of those babys?
I did, briefly.
A high-school friend had one. He brought it over one day and we
played with it. I wanted one, but then I'd wanted one from the
magazine ads because it looked like a good cheap way to get a computer
at home. As I recall, list price was $279 for the Superboard II, and
$349 for the C1P (Superboard II in a box with case, power supply,
etc.) Then I got an Apple ][+, and pretty much forgot about the C1P.
Some years later I ran into him again. It turned out that he was also
getting back into old micros (as was I, so this probably would have
been around 1989), and was fiddling around with an HP 150 that had
come into his possession. It did the things he needed it to do.
I asked him what had become of his C1P. As I recall, the combination
of hacks perpetrated upon it with a soldering iron had rendered it
somewhat more unstable than when manufactured, and it was finally done
in by a flood: the motherboard was soaked, and as it dried out the
substrate of the board peeled apart.
Next time I went to a hamfest (ObUK: radio rally) (it was in
Gaithersburg, Maryland, so it was probably about this time of year) I
saw a C1P. (No, Kip, I don't remember whether it was the
Roman-numeral kind or not.) It was cheap; $20 or $25, something like
that. So I bought it, took it home, and called him on the phone. He
took it with him; I hope his wife didn't make him get rid of it.
(Bill, are you reading this? (Psst, Norwin! Go get Bill!))
-Frank McConnell, not speaking for The Wollongong Group
<fr...@twg.com> "I want my MPE" (w/apologies to Dire Straits)
Bill Sudbrink
Rumors of the demise of my first C1P were exagerated. A careful
cleaning revealed that it was crud that was in the flood water
that was peeling off the motherboard. After thorough scrubbing,
it is back up and running, although flakey as you mention due to
the botched attempts at installing the RS-232 port. I finally
replicated the circuit on a breadboard. It is also attached to
a different power supply as the flood killed the original.
I also have the one you got at the hamfest, it works fine.
Bill