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Hi from an OSI collector (C1, C2, and C3 systems

Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 2:07 pm
by mcsele
Hi all

I'm Mark Csele and have been a collector of OSI equipment for some time. In 1979 my parents bought me a Superboard II which allowed me to "cut my teeth" into computers. Aside from learning BASIC I was particularly interested in hardware (data and address buses, timing, etc) and built a memory expansion (on a 44-pin card), I/O interfaces, and a sound card. I was inspired enough to become a computer engineer by profession and taught computer engineering technology at college (although I'm now teaching photonics or "laser engineering" full time but that's a longer story). I have done a fair bit of embedded systems development, professionally, most on PIC and DSP processors and most in assembly language.

Many years later (the 90's) a colleague of mine gave me a Superboard he had from his days where his dad was a distributor of these systems. Since then I have collected a number of systems including a few Superboards, several C2's (a C2-4P, a C2-8P with video and dual disks, and a C2-OEM) and a C3 (with 6502, 6800, and Z80 processors and running both OS65D and CP/M).

While I am familiar with the hardware, I am not as familiar with software (like the details of how the O/S's work at the "nitty gritty" level) and have a ways to go in terms of learning (although when playing with HEXDOS I was amazed at how some tasks were accomplished ... this is the type of thing I like to discover). While some of my systems are perfect, others are "flaky" or not working at all and need diagnostics - not a problem as I have a fully equipped workshop with a digital scope, logic analyzer, etc - this is particularly true of a few disk-based systems.

As with many folks, I'm sure, I have _too many_ hobbies although with both kids having left the home presumably I'll have more time in the future to tinker. I also enjoy, for example, woodworking, camping, and building various electronics projects (everything from my own DTV antenna farm to a DSP-based colour organ from my kid) and have an interest in history (military, and technology like generating stations esp. in the Niagara region of Canada). Aside from my small OSI collection I also have a PDP11/34, a PDP8/A, and a PDP-8/F.

That's me in a nutshell.

So, having conversed with a number of you via email it's about time I joined the forum. I have a few projects I'd like to explore for both my OSI and PDP systems including a disk emulator (I'm thinking of using a dsPIC to do this and an SST flash chip to store the images from many disks) so that I might preserve old and failing disks. In the short term, I have a Superboard running HEXDOS and I'd like to get OS65D running on it (having finally debugged the disk controller although there is an issue there in the step rates which I need to address which might prevent OS65 from booting).

I've noticed on the forum a "most wanted" list for software ... I'll need to go through my collection carefully as I have many disks but some are not useable (no surprises for 30+ year old floppies).

Cheers ... Mark

Re: Hi from an OSI collector (C1, C2, and C3 systems

Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2015 8:17 pm
by BillO
Hi Mark,

Great to have you aboard!

Another Canadian too, eh? It seems we're takin' over, eh?

Re: Hi from an OSI collector (C1, C2, and C3 systems

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 1:23 am
by Jeff
Hi Mark,

Welcome!

/Jeff

Re: Hi from an OSI collector (C1, C2, and C3 systems

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 2:24 am
by Steve Gray
Welcome fellow Ontarian!

Steve

Re: Hi from an OSI collector (C1, C2, and C3 systems

Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:31 am
by dave
Welcome!

So glad to have you here :-)

Dave