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vbriel · Site Admin Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 723 Location: Ohio

I finally traded for a OSI 600 (AKA SuperBoard II). The board is fully self contained SBC with keyboard, video, BASIC in ROM 8K RAM, serial port (300 BAUD) and cassette port.

Programs can be entered by cassette or you can dump them thru the serial port like the replica 1 can do. The display is a tiny 24X25 display but upto 32 characters across are possible. Unfortunately only 24X25 is visable.

Here's my setup as I have it after 1 day.

In just 1 day I was able to locate the user manual, magazine articles, programs, tips and tricks, etc. I was able to setup the video and RS232 ports via internet info as well.

This would make a great computer to replicate but there is a real issue with the keyboard. It is a polled keyboard and therefore nearly impossible to attach a ps/2 up to it. A custom matrix onboard keyboard is possible but finding and implimenting the space bar would be difficult.

The display isn't that great but could be duplicated as well as the serial port. The cassette interface has 1 hard to find chip but there may be a work around.

What do you guys think?

Vince

nekonoko · Posted: Sep Mon 22, 2008 11:54 am Post subject:

Looks like fun to me. Since the display is low resolution, it might be fun to integrate a small LCD panel. I was going to link to a photo of one recently implemented on the N8VEM, but the forum isn't allowing me to link to my website. You should be able to view it in the N8VEM Google group though.

vbriel · Site Admin Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 723 Location: Ohio

Aaron Teeling · Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Virginia Beach, VA

You build it and I of course will purchase one.

Not too familiar with the OSI 600... How will this compare with your Replica1 kit?

Looking over some of the collector sites, there was a floppy drive option. Any thoughts on developing a mass storage device similar to a 3.5" floppy?

hanso · Joined: 22 Sep 2007 Posts: 65

Congrats Vince on your new toy!

Making a replica indeed will be complicated by the matrix keyboard.

xprt · Joined: 15 Jun 2008 Posts: 18

Vince,
Oh my god. The superboard was the first computer I ever owned!
I bought it in the late '70s for I think it was $250. That's all I could afford at the time. It was the cheapest computer I could find that could actually do something without investing in a teletype or dumb terminal.

Later I bought the piggy back expansion board that added more RAM. I even bought the floppy drive.

The whole computer was designed for simplicity. The disk OS was ridiculously simple. The disk would spin continuously. The file system was hard formatted so you would store a file in position #1, read one from position #3, etc. Really awful.

I made some little hardware experiments with it. I modified the graphics for a simple block graphics mode (2 x 4 blocks for each character). I also hooked up a D/A converter for sound generation.

I had the assembler, the disk OS. I even bought a third party book of the whole OS disassembled and fully commented.

Typical story, I threw the whole thing away about 15 years ago.

nekonoko · Posted: Sep Mon 29, 2008 2:38 pm Post subject:

Aaron Teeling · Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 75 Location: Virginia Beach, VA

I forgot about this...

... any future thoughts on an OSI 600 Replica?

Aaron

vbriel · Site Admin Joined: 19 Jul 2005 Posts: 723 Location: Ohio

I'd love to. What stinks is I'd like to do it with the keyboard all built onboard, but custom keyboards are expensive to make. A project like this would take some planning, too many other things on the board right now.

Vince