Greetings!
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:48 am
Hello everyone! I'm a long-time forum lurker, but was only recently made aware that registration was open again. I'm also registered as glitch on the vintage-computer.com forums, so if you've ran into me there, yes, it's the same person!
I was introduced to OSI systems by one of my employers...he and his business partner got into OSI computers as part of their business -- designing and building mastering equalizers. They both bought OSI Challenger IIIs and ran mostly OS-65D and OS-65U, although it seems there was some CP/M dabbling, mostly for running Microsoft Fortran. One of the systems was a mostly off-the-shelf Challenger III OEM kit, while the other system was basically a huge Lambda 5-volt linear supply, a backplane and system boards. The second system, in addition to dual 8" floppies, also sported a Shugart SA-1000 hard disk running OS-65U and OSI's database.
Anyhow, I ended up with both systems, the system software and the manuals. I've been working on getting one of the systems up and going, and have a pretty stable Challenger III with triple-processor 510 CPU board, 48K of static RAM in 520 boards, 8K populated on an additional 520 board (for CP/M), and a 470 floppy controller board. Both of the original 8" drives were toast (bearings frozen, sensors/switches dead, et c.) and have been replaced with Shugart SA-800 drives. It boots OS-65D and OS-65U, and tries to boot CP/M but fails due to bad media.
Short-term plans for the system are to build a high-density static RAM board, providing 48K + 8K for CP/M using modern SRAMs. After that, I'm going to begin creation of a bare-metal bootstrap system for OSI systems (pushing machine code over the console through monitor commands, a la ADTPro) as well as a disk imaging system for 8" floppies that supports reading /and/ writing!
I was introduced to OSI systems by one of my employers...he and his business partner got into OSI computers as part of their business -- designing and building mastering equalizers. They both bought OSI Challenger IIIs and ran mostly OS-65D and OS-65U, although it seems there was some CP/M dabbling, mostly for running Microsoft Fortran. One of the systems was a mostly off-the-shelf Challenger III OEM kit, while the other system was basically a huge Lambda 5-volt linear supply, a backplane and system boards. The second system, in addition to dual 8" floppies, also sported a Shugart SA-1000 hard disk running OS-65U and OSI's database.
Anyhow, I ended up with both systems, the system software and the manuals. I've been working on getting one of the systems up and going, and have a pretty stable Challenger III with triple-processor 510 CPU board, 48K of static RAM in 520 boards, 8K populated on an additional 520 board (for CP/M), and a 470 floppy controller board. Both of the original 8" drives were toast (bearings frozen, sensors/switches dead, et c.) and have been replaced with Shugart SA-800 drives. It boots OS-65D and OS-65U, and tries to boot CP/M but fails due to bad media.
Short-term plans for the system are to build a high-density static RAM board, providing 48K + 8K for CP/M using modern SRAMs. After that, I'm going to begin creation of a bare-metal bootstrap system for OSI systems (pushing machine code over the console through monitor commands, a la ADTPro) as well as a disk imaging system for 8" floppies that supports reading /and/ writing!