Hi, I was pointed this way via post on the VCFED forum. Glad to be here!
I recently picked up a Challenger 4P C4PMF from a local estate sale. I don't recall ever hearing about this company or machine despite growing up in this era and having a garage shelf full of old computers.
The 6502 tested as bad in my backbit.io chip tester. I replaced it with a 6502 from another system and it now boots to a H/D/M? prompt. I'll start another thread in the appropriate section as I work through this, but I assume this is a good sign that it gets this far.
hello, and what brought me here
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Dokken
- Posts: 45
- Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am
hello, and what brought me here
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BillO
- Posts: 216
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Re: hello, and what brought me here
Welcome!
It's strange that you did not hear of OSI. They advertised extensively in BYTE magazine as well as others and had quite a few retail outlets that also ran ads.
Yes, it's a good sign you are getting that boot prompt although I surprised there is no "W" or "C" options. I'm not sure what the "H" option means either. I'm not familiar with the C4P's, so all that could be just fine. "D" should be boot from disk and "M" should be enter machine code monitor.
It's strange that you did not hear of OSI. They advertised extensively in BYTE magazine as well as others and had quite a few retail outlets that also ran ads.
Yes, it's a good sign you are getting that boot prompt although I surprised there is no "W" or "C" options. I'm not sure what the "H" option means either. I'm not familiar with the C4P's, so all that could be just fine. "D" should be boot from disk and "M" should be enter machine code monitor.
Box stock Superboard II Rev. B
KLyball replica 600D, replica 610 & KLyball Data Separator
OMS SBME and SBME+ memory cards
OMS Digi-Mule expansion bus
KLyball memory card
KLyball replica 600D, replica 610 & KLyball Data Separator
OMS SBME and SBME+ memory cards
OMS Digi-Mule expansion bus
KLyball memory card
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Mark
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
- Location: Madison, WI
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Re: hello, and what brought me here
Hi,
Nice Estate Sale find!
You have a floppy disk based OSI C4P system. The "H/D/M" prompt is normal for this machine. Upon reset it is asking to boot from [H]ard disk/floppy [D]isk/ or enter [M]onitor. (There is no actual hard disk option for this machine despite the prompt.) You can reset the CPU with power-cycle or by pressing the BREAK key for up to a few seconds (depending on your particular version of keyboard).
The Shift-Lock key must be pressed/down for normal keyboard entry. At the H/D/M? prompt entering 'M' takes you to a simple system monitor where the commands are '.' to enter address mode, '/' to enter data mode, 0-9 A-F to modify hex addresses or data, 'L' to load from serial port, and 'G' to transfer execution to the current address.
For instance entering the monitor and typing '.DE00/00 01' should toggle video width between 64x32 to 32x32 modes and back.
Pressing 'D' after Reset should activate the floppy disk drive if everything is working.
To create a bootable floppy disk will require a low density 5.25" floppy disk and a serial connection to a host computer.
Having just read part of the OSI C4P Operations manual it appears the C4P defaults to 1200baud. By default I believe the "printer" serial port should be active.
You can test for proper serial I/O using a 21 byte program found here: on a different thread.
Once verified, you can attempt to write a floppy disk using the DiskTool OSI program found here:
(Using DiskTool's 16x faster transfer mode should allow you to upload disk images at 19.2Kbaud making the process slightly less painful.)
One of the first disks to write should be C4P-OS65D_3.3_Tutorial5.65d
Which will give you access to most of the important OSI utilities and BASIC. The OSI disk operating system is very primitive, you must create a file of the appropriate size before you can save data to it, so it is important to do before creating a new BASIC program.
Lots of data on https://osiweb.org and https://osi.marks-lab.com if you want to dig deeper!
Good Luck!
Nice Estate Sale find!
You have a floppy disk based OSI C4P system. The "H/D/M" prompt is normal for this machine. Upon reset it is asking to boot from [H]ard disk/floppy [D]isk/ or enter [M]onitor. (There is no actual hard disk option for this machine despite the prompt.) You can reset the CPU with power-cycle or by pressing the BREAK key for up to a few seconds (depending on your particular version of keyboard).
The Shift-Lock key must be pressed/down for normal keyboard entry. At the H/D/M? prompt entering 'M' takes you to a simple system monitor where the commands are '.' to enter address mode, '/' to enter data mode, 0-9 A-F to modify hex addresses or data, 'L' to load from serial port, and 'G' to transfer execution to the current address.
For instance entering the monitor and typing '.DE00/00 01' should toggle video width between 64x32 to 32x32 modes and back.
Pressing 'D' after Reset should activate the floppy disk drive if everything is working.
To create a bootable floppy disk will require a low density 5.25" floppy disk and a serial connection to a host computer.
Having just read part of the OSI C4P Operations manual it appears the C4P defaults to 1200baud. By default I believe the "printer" serial port should be active.
You can test for proper serial I/O using a 21 byte program found here: on a different thread.
Once verified, you can attempt to write a floppy disk using the DiskTool OSI program found here:
(Using DiskTool's 16x faster transfer mode should allow you to upload disk images at 19.2Kbaud making the process slightly less painful.)
One of the first disks to write should be C4P-OS65D_3.3_Tutorial5.65d
Which will give you access to most of the important OSI utilities and BASIC. The OSI disk operating system is very primitive, you must create a file of the appropriate size before you can save data to it, so it is important to do before creating a new BASIC program.
Lots of data on https://osiweb.org and https://osi.marks-lab.com if you want to dig deeper!
Good Luck!
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Dokken
- Posts: 45
- Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:47 am
Re: hello, and what brought me here
Fantastic primer on getting started. thank you.
I received some 6502 spares in the mail today (was testing with one from an Apple IIe). I have bunch of 2114 coming in Saturday. Two of the 2114 RAM chips on the video board are testing bad, and I'm getting some garbage on the bottom half of the screen. hopefully that will fix that.
All RAM on the RAM board is testing fine (so far, haven't worked my way through all of them).
The composite out seems a little dim using a cheap LCD TV/monitor. [EDIT]---just read the manual Mark referenced above and it seems the video out is RF, not composite. no wonder mine is bad. I'll try RF in.
And the cooling fan bearings are shot. But I think I'm in a good place to get this thing up and running!
[EDIT 2]: I'll attach a pic of the floppies that I got. probably 25+, all professionally labelled OSI floppies, well organized and catalogued.
I received some 6502 spares in the mail today (was testing with one from an Apple IIe). I have bunch of 2114 coming in Saturday. Two of the 2114 RAM chips on the video board are testing bad, and I'm getting some garbage on the bottom half of the screen. hopefully that will fix that.
All RAM on the RAM board is testing fine (so far, haven't worked my way through all of them).
The composite out seems a little dim using a cheap LCD TV/monitor. [EDIT]---just read the manual Mark referenced above and it seems the video out is RF, not composite. no wonder mine is bad. I'll try RF in.
And the cooling fan bearings are shot. But I think I'm in a good place to get this thing up and running!
[EDIT 2]: I'll attach a pic of the floppies that I got. probably 25+, all professionally labelled OSI floppies, well organized and catalogued.
- Screen Shot 2022-07-07 at 3.42.40 PM OSI floppies.png (2.09 MiB) Viewed 18202 times
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Mark
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
- Location: Madison, WI
- Contact:
Re: hello, and what brought me here
Although it is possible the RCA video connector is RF, I've only seen composite video out on the RCA connectors on the back of a C4P.
There are pots on the 540 video board which can be adjusted for video levels and balance. See the SAMS C4P Service Manual pg 37. R5 ? Or Original OSI 540B schematics
The video board will produce color, but it would be tedious to test without entering in code with serial or disk.
To enable color video output type .DE00/05 in the monitor. 4-bit Color RAM is at $E000-E7FF. Video character RAM is at $D000-D7FF
entering .D0D0/A1 .E0D0/08 in the monitor should put a blue square near the monitor line at the top of the screen.
Oh, and one more monitor command I forgot above <return> goes to next address when typing in hex data.
Looks like you have all the software you need to get going!
One more piece of advice: Don't turn off the system/drive with an un-write protected floppy disk in the drive! I seem to recall glitching a few disks back in the day when I forgot.
Good Luck!
There are pots on the 540 video board which can be adjusted for video levels and balance. See the SAMS C4P Service Manual pg 37. R5 ? Or Original OSI 540B schematics
The video board will produce color, but it would be tedious to test without entering in code with serial or disk.
To enable color video output type .DE00/05 in the monitor. 4-bit Color RAM is at $E000-E7FF. Video character RAM is at $D000-D7FF
entering .D0D0/A1 .E0D0/08 in the monitor should put a blue square near the monitor line at the top of the screen.
Oh, and one more monitor command I forgot above <return> goes to next address when typing in hex data.
Looks like you have all the software you need to get going!
One more piece of advice: Don't turn off the system/drive with an un-write protected floppy disk in the drive! I seem to recall glitching a few disks back in the day when I forgot.
Good Luck!
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BillO
- Posts: 216
- Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2014 4:03 pm
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
Re: hello, and what brought me here
Nice!
It would be awesome if you could possibly archive those disks and have them uploaded here for posterity.
It would be awesome if you could possibly archive those disks and have them uploaded here for posterity.
Box stock Superboard II Rev. B
KLyball replica 600D, replica 610 & KLyball Data Separator
OMS SBME and SBME+ memory cards
OMS Digi-Mule expansion bus
KLyball memory card
KLyball replica 600D, replica 610 & KLyball Data Separator
OMS SBME and SBME+ memory cards
OMS Digi-Mule expansion bus
KLyball memory card
-
dave
- Site Admin
- Posts: 717
- Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:24 am
Re: hello, and what brought me here
Hi Dokken,
Welcome to the board and congratulations on a really nice find!
It looks like you have enough advice already to move forward, and I have nothing more to add, but look forward to seeing your progress.
Dave
Welcome to the board and congratulations on a really nice find!
It looks like you have enough advice already to move forward, and I have nothing more to add, but look forward to seeing your progress.
Dave
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dave
- Site Admin
- Posts: 717
- Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:24 am
Re: hello, and what brought me here
@Mark: Wow, the DiskTool looks fantastic! I had no idea you had created this. It will be a game changer.
Dave
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Mark
- Posts: 297
- Joined: Tue Sep 16, 2008 6:04 am
- Location: Madison, WI
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Re: hello, and what brought me here
Thanks,@Mark: Wow, the DiskTool looks fantastic! I had no idea you had created this. It will be a game changer.
Dave
the announcement got buried in another thread a while back. I never started it in it's own topic. I don't recall why it ended up there, but it may have been in response to a question/comment someone else referenced.
-Mark