Ohio Scientific Advert - January 1977
From Byte - The Small Systems Journal
Meet the OSI Challenger
Before it was even the Challenger 1 is this advert for Ohio Scientific Instruments' Challenger. It was an S-100-based system which derived from the company's earlier "Superboard 400" micro boards, however it used its own proprietary version of the S-100 bus, based on four 12-pin molex plugs rather than the usual 50-pin edge connector.
It also ran MOS Technology's 6502 processor - with an option for the unusual 4MHz 6502C - but did also offer a Motorola 6800 board as an option. The bare-board card was available in kit form from as little as $29 - that's only £160 in 2024, whilst the fully-assembled Challenger started from $439 - about £2,420 now.
OSI announces its new OSI 6502 8K BASIC in April 1977's Byte magazine.
A few months later, the company was advertising its updated OSI 6502 8K BASIC. Written for it by Microsoft, which provided the BASIC running on many of the machines of the day, it was claiming that it ran eight times faster than the 8080 BASIC as found on the Altair, and "hundreds" of times faster than many 6800 BASICs.
The new BASIC was available for free with any of OSI's Challenger machines, as long as they had 12K or more memory. It could also be purchased for $50, or about £260 in 2024, and was even available on paper tape.
The advert also shows that OSI was still at its original Hiram, Ohio, address. In January 1978, when the company expanded, it moved to a former drinks factory in Aurora.
Date created: 10 January 2024
Last updated: 12 September 2024
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