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Hello

Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 8:03 pm
by john
I joined the forum quite a while ago and have been lurking around. It's time to do the introduction.

When I started as a young Engineer with a small telco on the East Coast of Canada the OSI CP3 was state of the art.
We had the 19" rack mounted version with two sliding drawers. One for dual 8" floppy disks and one for the CPU, 48k memory, serial IO and the disk controller.

We used the system to build many special assemblies for telephony applications. The most famous is the Meet-me Conference Bridge.
The very first dial-in meet-me conference bridge was build using a CP3 OSI computer.

When they disposed of the unit in the late 1980's i picked it up for $10 along with many of the manuals and disk.

The whole unit has been collecting dust in my basement for the last 25 years. Just this week I fired it up and have the famous H/D/M?
prompt proudly displayed on a terminal. The disks are have a few issues so I'm not running any software as yet.

When I find time I will create a list of all that manuals and disks that I have and post a note with a list.

john

Re: Hello

Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 10:24 pm
by MK14HAK
Welcome John.
That really is bargain basement stuff.
Your so fortunate it has cold started that far after all this time. Hows the memory I wonder?
Look forward to seeing your list of disks and manuals. And what are all the boards?
I still have working 8" drives but on a video system. If your disks have any fungal infection your are definitely best to clean them before trying to boot.
There are also 8" images on Dave's site you could tweak for serial and try on clean media.
Mike

Re: Hello

Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 12:36 am
by Klyball
Hi John

Super cool unit, I'm in the process of building up a 510 Franken system myself ,looking forward to your progress

Grant

Re: Hello

Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 1:24 am
by Steve Gray
Welcome! Nice OSI stuff.

Steve

Re: Hello

Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 2:18 am
by BillO
Good to have you aboard John!

Nice system. I used to look at the ads for those CP3 systems back in the 70's and drool. What incredible potential that system had. :mrgreen:

Then the 8086 came along and computers have taken a downhill turn since. :evil:

I have a new laptop with more raw computing power than NORAD had in the 70's and I can barely get day to day work done on it. Windows 8.1, bah, humbug!

Re: Hello

Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 11:51 am
by dave
Welcome, John!

That's a really neat machine! It's great to have a C3 owner on board. I never got to see one in real life, but remember the ads for them very well. I'm also glad to see another serial system user on the site. Those are under-represented, so we'd be glad to follow you as you re-aquaint yourself with the machine.

It sounds like you have some unique items and documentation--can't wait to see what you come up with.

Dave