Elektor and OSI's OS-65D (was OHIO-DOS)

From: Robert Maxwell <RMaxwell_at_atlantissi.com>
Date: Mon Mar 1 09:34:08 2004

  As the owner of a modified and still-working OSI Superboard 2 running
under OS-65D 3.3, I may have a few insights about the Elektor link to
OS-65D:

 - I had owned my machine for around 5 years (that would make it 1985) when
a friend showed me the two-part Elektor article of a floppy-disk interface
for the ongoing "Junior Computer" series. Using the schematics, I
hand-wired (anyone else remember Vector's "Pencil Wiring" with
solder-through insulation?) a disk interface for my Superboard.

 - The Elektor article "adopted" OS-65D because OSI sold the DOS as a
stand-alone product, complete with utilities for customizing disks,
developing code in BASIC and Assembler, and capable of running serial or
memory-mapped user I/O with the change of a byte in DOS. It sounds like the
Elektor authors went forward and used OD-65D for later projects.

 - By 1985, MA/COM had renamed OSI to ISOTRON during the slow- and shut-down
of manufacturing - they stopped buying masked ROMs, and made Superboards and
C1Ps patched to use 2716 EPROMs instead - but were still selling the Disk
OS. When I telephone-ordered a copy and asked for "OS-65D V. 3.3 for a
C1P", a fellow worker figured I was some sort of spy speaking code!
Fortunately, the folks at the factory knew what I was talking about. The
documentation binder bears the name ISOTRON on its cover.

 - Like the Elektor authors, I patched my OS-65D, for an 80x24 video card in
my system. I had written extensions into a copy of the OSI Monitor ROM: I
was a little peeved when OS-65D loaded, ignored the redirected video, and
brought in its own drivers for the original 24x24 screen... I was sooo glad
I maintained back-compatibility.

  I still have the original OSI disks and docs: there are 5 disks with all
sorts of utilities (mostly in BASIC), the binder for the OS and separate
manuals for the "Assembler/Editor and Extended Monitor" and disk BASIC. The
handiest thing (and most well-worn!) is the little fold-out card listing DOS
commands, memory locations and error code descriptions. I'm a little
puzzled at the reference to OS-65D V3.2... Version 3.3 was the "full"
version, and the single-floppy reduced version was 3.1: perhaps someone
patched a version 3.1 disk for their own project, and just incremented the
number?

Bob Maxwell

--- Original Message ---
 
> > I'm looking for information on the OHIO-DOS system.
> > Has anyone some sources, programs or historic info
> > on this OS for the 6502?
> >
> > Right now I'm rebuilding an 65816 system (EC65K) which
> > was published in 1986 by Elektuur/Elektor and was running
> > OHIO DOS 65D V3.2.
>
> Ohio Scientific Instruments (OSI) had a 6502 OS in the late
> 1970's and early 1980's called OS-65D. They were bought by
> MA/COM (sometimes mistyped as MA-COM) who carried on for a
> couple of years. I don't know whether they licensed it to
> any other vendors, but you might Google for OS-65D. Also,
> OS-65U was their multi user OS. I'm a "fan" of OSI, if it
> turns out that this is the OSI OS, I would be interested to
> know the story of Elektuur/Elektor and how the old (and to
> be honest, rather crude) OS was being used in 1986.
>
> Bill Sudbrink
>
Received on Mon Mar 01 2004 - 09:34:08 GMT