Interesting Ohio Scientific Information

From: Bill Sudbrink <bill_at_chipware.com>
Date: Mon May 10 15:28:38 1999

Thought those on the list that are interested in OSI
might want to see this. From an OSI engineer who still
wishes to remain anonymous:

> Hi Bill,

> I haven't forgot you, just got around to pulling box
> out of storage.

> The plastic cases are C1P Series 2. I ran across a
> usage report dated 11/24/1980 that indicates we had
> plastic shells in stock then. Those plus what we had
> on order at that date was for about 1000 units. Average
> weekly usage on the report was 28.5 units. I don't have
> any more specific figures than that. I know we shipped
> C1P Series 2 units, but I have no idea of the total.

...

> If you're not aware of it, the C1P plastic cases were
> simply top and bottom shells that attached to a C4P metal
> case. The C4P case used the same metal, but had the walnut
> sides. There were metal case C1Ps before that. From the
> literature I have, it appears the metal case C1P shipped
> <until> about August of 1978. An October 1, 1979 sales
> information release still showed the metal cased C1P.

...

> The same 11/24/1980 usage report shows 4 560ZB PC boards
> in stock with none on order and average weekly usage zero.
> My guess is that these are the remainder of a run of 5 or 10.
> They are very rare. I believe I saw a board once. I never saw
> one operating. I did not design it. The 560Z was a redesign
> of the earlier 460Z that I don't think I ever saw. The 560Z
> board ran the Z80 and Intersil 6100 micros. I have a 560Z
> schematic dated August 1977 with status indicated as
> "Production". The 460Z is in a March 1976 price list and
> appears to only have supported the Intersil 6100. Both boards
> require a OSI 6502 based CPU board as a host. I started at OSI
> November 1977. The 560Z board appears to be the last board
> designed before I became Chief Engineer. I ran across some
> technical information that because of PDP8 unique IO micro
> code, that you could not simply run PDP8 code on it.
Received on Mon May 10 1999 - 15:28:38 BST