I thought i'd post about a machine which certainly qualifies to be classic,
an ohio scientific challenger C1P of which i know nothing about. i did get
some extensive documentation with it including a presale brochure, some
photocopied machine language programs, the original reciept dated 20jun1980
for $425, some info about a d&n micro card which i also got, instructions for
eprom burner software, basic ref manual, and some highly technical info and
board schematics. i also have several cassette tapes of software including an
original adventure 0 copyright 1979 for a 24k apple and asteroids also.
i also got several boards that i dont know about included. one seems to be a
floppy controller and ram card from d&n micro products, two of them say osi
model 502 and 527 and some others i cannot tell what they are. they all have
circuit traces some missing some sockets and all are mising components so it
seems like its part of a kit. anyone know about this model? it seems to be
apple ][ compatible, but i havent bothered turning it on yet. heh, would be
neat to find a floppy drive for it...
david
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Woo-hoo!!
I also have some OSI equipment... LOTS of it, in fact. However, it's
all in Texas and I'm in Missouri. But the good part is that I also have
a lot of documentation (boxes and boxes of it) and lotsa 8" floppies that
presumably go to it.
However...
I have only tried turning on one of the 3 machines (a C4 I think?) and
it's floppy drive was hosed. This is a little desktop unit that has
keyboard built in and has WOODEN sides. The other two are rackmount
machines that are heavy and ugly. I haven't tried turning them on
because they required a dumb terminal to see any output on them.
My plan is to graduate from College in a year and then after settled in a
job (and home with lotsa storage space), start restoring them. And in
the process make a web page consisting of all the documentation I have on
the beast. However, I'm afraid that in the mean time I can't directly
help you very much.
I can say, however, with a good deal of certainty that the OSI C1P is
_NOT_ Apple II compatable, although it probably does have a 6502 in it.
As far as I know, all OSI equipment ran CP/M or a kind of multi-user
CP/M. I have an OSI 8-something or another that was built to be a
multiuser system (like 2-8 users) with multiple processors (mixed Z80s and
6502s). Mine only has one 6502 in it.
Maybe I'll grab some of the OSI documentation when I go home to Texas at
in 2 weeks and start the webpage. However, my summer project is to
restore my Apple Lisa & document it.
Anyone be able to help me on this? :)
I guess if you have any specific questions/needs regarding the OSI stuff, I
see what I can do... good luck with it! It's a nifty machine. There
are a few other OSI owners on the net I've talked to, including a guy
somewhere in {Washington|Oregon|California} that uses his C4P Challenger
to control lights & stuff at a planetarium. The C4P was a hacker's dream
because it had lotsa serial, parallel, outputs plus a "experimenter's
port" which was actually like an external connection to the data bus I
believe. It also had sound and color graphics that allegedly rivaled the
Apple II in its time (perhaps before its time).
Like I said... good luck with it! I'll help out as I can, but all my OSI
stuff is in Texas.
chris starling