As the owner of a modified and still-working OSI Superboard 2 running
under OS-65D 3.3, I may have a few insights about the Elektor link to
OS-65D:
- I had owned my machine for around 5 years (that would make it 1985) when
a friend showed me the two-part Elektor article of a floppy-disk interface
for the ongoing "Junior Computer" series. Using the schematics, I
hand-wired (anyone else remember Vector's "Pencil Wiring" with
solder-through insulation?) a disk interface for my Superboard.
- The Elektor article "adopted" OS-65D because OSI sold the DOS as a
stand-alone product, complete with utilities for customizing disks,
developing code in BASIC and Assembler, and capable of running serial or
memory-mapped user I/O with the change of a byte in DOS. It sounds like the
Elektor authors went forward and used OD-65D for later projects.
- By 1985, MA/COM had renamed OSI to ISOTRON during the slow- and shut-down
of manufacturing - they stopped buying masked ROMs, and made Superboards and
C1Ps patched to use 2716 EPROMs instead - but were still selling the Disk
OS. When I telephone-ordered a copy and asked for "OS-65D V. 3.3 for a
C1P", a fellow worker figured I was some sort of spy speaking code!
Fortunately, the folks at the factory knew what I was talking about. The
documentation binder bears the name ISOTRON on its cover.
- Like the Elektor authors, I patched my OS-65D, for an 80x24 video card in
my system. I had written extensions into a copy of the OSI Monitor ROM: I
was a little peeved when OS-65D loaded, ignored the redirected video, and
brought in its own drivers for the original 24x24 screen... I was sooo glad
I maintained back-compatibility.
I still have the original OSI disks and docs: there are 5 disks with all
sorts of utilities (mostly in BASIC), the binder for the OS and separate
manuals for the "Assembler/Editor and Extended Monitor" and disk BASIC. The
handiest thing (and most well-worn!) is the little fold-out card listing DOS
commands, memory locations and error code descriptions. I'm a little
puzzled at the reference to OS-65D V3.2... Version 3.3 was the "full"
version, and the single-floppy reduced version was 3.1: perhaps someone
patched a version 3.1 disk for their own project, and just incremented the
number?
Bob Maxwell
--- Original Message ---
> > I'm looking for information on the OHIO-DOS system.
> > Has anyone some sources, programs or historic info
> > on this OS for the 6502?
> >
> > Right now I'm rebuilding an 65816 system (EC65K) which
> > was published in 1986 by Elektuur/Elektor and was running
> > OHIO DOS 65D V3.2.
>
> Ohio Scientific Instruments (OSI) had a 6502 OS in the late
> 1970's and early 1980's called OS-65D. They were bought by
> MA/COM (sometimes mistyped as MA-COM) who carried on for a
> couple of years. I don't know whether they licensed it to
> any other vendors, but you might Google for OS-65D. Also,
> OS-65U was their multi user OS. I'm a "fan" of OSI, if it
> turns out that this is the OSI OS, I would be interested to
> know the story of Elektuur/Elektor and how the old (and to
> be honest, rather crude) OS was being used in 1986.
>
> Bill Sudbrink
>
Hi, I have a CPT 8520, printer and keyboard but I can't find the power cord or printer cable. Could you provide any info on finding CPT hook ups? Thanks, Jack Duckworth
Yesterday my boss came to me and handed me a stack of 3 1/2 inch floppy
disks and asked me to get the data off them.
Ahh, the perils of being the geekiest person in your orginazation! :)
Anyway, all he could tell me is that they were from a Brother word
processor. It didn't have a model number and no serial port.
One of the disks is a system disk ("Spreadsheet, punctualtion alert and
data storage disk for Brother Word Processor version <1.0>") and is
dated 1991.
I tried the disk in my DOS 6.22 PC, no deal.
Then I tried cw2dmk (thanks Tim!) and my Catweasel, but I guess the
format isn't close enough to IBM 370 (FM) or IBM 34 (MFM) formats to be
useful.
Does anyone know of a tool I can use to read these disks?
Barring that: does anybody know what format the disk is using? I'm not
past modifying cw2dmk to read it, but I would hope not to have to
reverse engineer the "on disk" format.
Thanks!
--
tim lindner
tlindner(a)ix.netcom.com
On Mar 3, 16:38, Brad Parker wrote:
>
> I finally got my TS11 racked this morning and after a good cleaning
> found that it has no +5v. (I must say, I love DEC manuals...)
>
> Looks like the H744 supply is not working. Anyone know about these?
> Are they easy to fix? Should I just pull it, find a schematic and
start
> probing?
It's used in various devices, from KL10s to 11/34s so the schematic
shouldn't be hard to find, and yes, they're fairly easy to work on.
It's a fairly simple circuit based on a 723 regulator chip.
I think I do have a spare, but I doubt if you want to pay transatlantic
shipping :-) H7440 and H7441 are very similar (different circuits,
same purpose).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Mar 3, 12:01, Jules Richardson wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 04:18, pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com wrote:
> > Looking forward for a response :P
>
> Now you're going to have to tell us idiots (i.e. me) what Hokki is...
It's a virus (or at least that subject line was created by a virus),
and it DIDN'T come from me.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Doug- hello, not to be a pest, but I was about to list some accessories for my old atc-510 flight simulator on ebay. I searched the internet for atc-510 simulator, and only came up with a handful of results. One of them was a thread where you said you were looking for something for your 510. Please let me know 1) if you still have the unit and 2) if you are looking for any accessories.
thanks for your time and sorry to bother you,
Mike
Hi all,
Thanks to Andreas Holz and Mr. Howard Israel of Zetters Pools Ltd
in London, we managed to save three PDP-11/94's, two 11/44's and
a /24, plus RL02 disks, a zillion spares, a lot of documentation
and small stuff. All systems were SCSI based, so, yes, we're
VERY happy with them!
Cheers,
Fred
--
Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist
Visit the VAXlab Project at http://VAXlab.pdp11.nl/
Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/
Email: waltje(a)pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Mountain View, CA, USA
I may have a line on some vintage equipment in Salem, Ohio, near Youngstown.
Is there anyone on the list living nearby who might be willing to help with
pickup, packing and shipping? I'd happily pay shipping/packaging costs plus
a little something for your trouble.
-- Tony
