Challenger V Product Preview Sheet

[TangentDelta]

I semi-recently picked up a Challenger III with a bunch of documents. While I was thumbing through one of the sales brochures, a product preview sheet from April 1981 fell out for the Challenger V.

Here is an image of the page.

It appears that the machine would have had a 68000 or Z8000 CPU and a 6502A for backwards-compatibility with OS-65U. It'd also fairly advanced graphics capabilities, and have the ability to genlock. The page also mentions compatibility with OSI's "full line of accessories", which makes me think it would have had an OSI-48 bus along with the higher-capacity 16-bit bus.

The machine would have had networking capabilities as well, using Ethernet. The page mentions an "IBS-NET". What is this?

I've skimmed through all of the PEEK(65) issues, and can't find any references to this machine.

[Mark]

I don't remember hearing about the Challenger V until your post (memory fades), but a bit of googling brought up this Infoworld July 20,1981 article
"They (Ma/Com) expect the Challenger V line to replace completely the existing product line by mid-1982" The Challenger V line consists of 4 basic units, C5-DT a repackaged C4P, C5-RM a rack-mount C3 replacement, and two others C5-IT, & C5-AC.

"OSI's IBS-Net operating system is initially a facelift of the OS65U level 3 Network system due by the end of summer 1981."
(more details in the article)

I believe the network supported by OS65U was the synchronous 500Kbps serial network used with the C3 business series OSI computers. The OSI555 "Jungle" board supported this interface. But the Challenger V line was to include ethernet.

OASIS from Phase One, Inc. was a z80 based OS. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THEOS

Fun Stuff!

[glitch]

Neat! I hadn't seen the InfoWorld article before. The previous owner of my Challenger III had told me about the Challenger V but I'd never found any advertising material for it until TangentDelta shared a picture of the flyer he has. Does anyone know if they *made* any?