Quote from: airship on January 27, 2009, 03:12 AM
As for PET, I never owned one (though I DID have an Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P, which was essentially a PET clone). The small amount of interest I have in them is strictly historical.

The OSI's were NOT PET clones... not even close, unless you call a machine with a 6502 and Microsoft BASIC a "clone". Then that would also make the Apple a PET clone too... When I was in high school looking to buy my first computer (circa 1981) I did lots of research and I compared all the machines at the time. I actually chose the OSI C4P computer because it beat the poor PET hands down spec-wise AND price-wise. Anyway, OSI was even worse at marketing than Commodore so they didn't last long. My next computer was the C64 and then the CBM-II B128 machine which was the "PET" I really wanted ;-)

Steve

Quote from: Steve Gray on January 29, 2009, 03:02 PM...then the CBM-II B128 machine which was the "PET" I really wanted ;-)

Do you still have that B128?

               Truly,
               Robert Bernardo
               Fresno Commodore User Group
               http://videocam.net.au/fcug
               Catch the Fatman and Circuit Girl at
               http://vimeo.com/jeri

Quote from: Steve Gray on January 29, 2009, 03:02 PM
The OSI's were NOT PET clones

Thanks for clearing that up I was surprised (to say the least) to read that there had actually been a PET clone.

Quote from: Steve Gray on January 29, 2009, 03:02 PM
Anyway, OSI was even worse at marketing than Commodore so they didn't last long.

No wonder then that I had never heard of them. Wonder if they ever even made it to Europe.

Quote from: RobertB on January 29, 2009, 06:41 PM

Quote from: Steve Gray on January 29, 2009, 03:02 PM...then the CBM-II B128 machine which was the "PET" I really wanted ;-)

Do you still have that B128?

               Truly,
               Robert Bernardo
               Fresno Commodore User Group
               http://videocam.net.au/fcug
               Catch the Fatman and Circuit Girl at
               http://vimeo.com/jeri

Yes, plus many more ;-)

Steve

Quote from: SmallCleverDinosaur on January 29, 2009, 07:48 PM

Quote from: Steve Gray on January 29, 2009, 03:02 PM
The OSI's were NOT PET clones

Thanks for clearing that up I was surprised (to say the least) to read that there had actually been a PET clone.

Quote from: Steve Gray on January 29, 2009, 03:02 PM
Anyway, OSI was even worse at marketing than Commodore so they didn't last long.

No wonder then that I had never heard of them. Wonder if they ever even made it to Europe.

Ironically, the OSI machines themselves were cloned... In england, the UK101 was a small computer based on the OSI Superboard. The architecture of all the OSI machines including the C2P and C4P were very similar. But lets not highjack this thread too much...

Steve

The OSI machines were not so much 'cloned PETs' as 'reverse-engineered PETs'. The BASICs were practically identical. The memory and CPU were the same. The character sets were as similar as copyrights allowed. It was blatantly obvious that Ohio Scientific's purpose was to ride the coattails of the PET.

Though it used the same CPU, an Apple was a totally different beast. Its architecture, OS, and BASIC were hugely different than the PET's.

Suffice it to say that my OSI experience transferred directly to the Commodore 64, while my friend with the Apple never could grasp the way my C64 did things.

Quote from: airship on February 03, 2009, 01:48 AM
The OSI machines were not so much 'cloned PETs' as 'reverse-engineered PETs'. The BASICs were practically identical. The memory and CPU were the same. The character sets were as similar as copyrights allowed. It was blatantly obvious that Ohio Scientific's purpose was to ride the coattails of the PET.

Though it used the same CPU, an Apple was a totally different beast. Its architecture, OS, and BASIC were hugely different than the PET's.

Suffice it to say that my OSI experience transferred directly to the Commodore 64, while my friend with the Apple never could grasp the way my C64 did things.

Yes, the CPU's were the same. The 6502 DEFINED low-cost 8-bit computing. The BASIC's were the same because all three companies (Commodore, OSI, and yes, even Apple) all licensed the SAME version from Microsoft. However, saying the OSI was even remotely reverse-engineered from the PET is incorrect. I know alot about the OSI's and I see NO resemblence in architecture between the two machines. Yes, the OSI had nice "graphics" in the character set, but so did Atari. The OSI used ASCII, while the PET used a proprietary "PETSCII" character set. Hardly "as similar as copyrights allowed"... The OSI's were built almost entirely of standard TTL chips, where the PET used in-house MOS chips for everything.

The OSI kernal is entirely different, the BASIC ROM and screen are at different locations. The keyboard is different. The screen is 32x32. All the ports are different. It has a CPU-driven floppy interface option (like the Apple) and even a hard drive board. How is that the same?

Did you know the OSI had a 6502 "trainer" board in 1976 and a TRIPLE CPU (6502, 6800, Z80) card in 1978?

http://osi.marks-lab.com/boards/boards.html

Here's a discussion about Microsoft BASIC:

http://www.pagetable.com/?p=46

And you can check out my home page for info on the OSI C4P...

http://ca.geocities.com/sjgray@rogers.com/OSI/index.html

I will say, the OSI also gave me a lot of experience too when I moved to the C64.

Steve