From: magnus@THEP.LU.SE (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Did the 80186 exist?
Date: 12 Aug 92 11:43:03 GMT
Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sweden

Note: This is a repost - I have reasons to suspect the first attempt to post
this article didn't succeed. 


In article <1992Aug5.062938.18165@lth.se> d89cb@efd.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:

>You see, back in the mid-1980s (around 85 or so), 

I think it was a few years earlier - see below. Anyway, I saw one used
in 1985, and then it had been around for at least a year.

>an offspring
>from the Swedish Telephone company (Televerket), then known as
>TeleComp (I think -- someone please correct me), decided to design a
>computer. It was to be aimed at the educational market -- High school
>level. So, they did just that. The result was a computer called
>"Compis". I have always found this name to be rather horrible, since
>it is a bad pun on "kompis" (which means "pal" or "friend" in Swedish)
>as well as "Computer" ... (hmmm .. "Your friend the computer" .. I
>wonder if those people had ever played Paranoia . probably not)

Officially, "Compis" was an acronym for "Computer In School" (yes, an
English acronym for a Swedish machine).

>Anyway, this beast had, at its heart, an Intel 80186. It ran as its
>native operating system, CP/M-86 from Digital Research. Also, a Pascal
>compiler, actually a p-code system (again, if I recall correctly) was
>available, and in general use on this machine.

The design decisions not to make the machine IBM compatible, and to
use CP/M 86 instead of MS-DOS, of course turned out to be big
mistakes, but at the time it didn't seem too bad. This is what makes
me place it a few years earlier than 1985 - the PClone revolution
hadn't started yet, and the IBM PC was seen as just another personal
computer (albeit rather expensive), and many people viewed MS-DOS as
inferior to CP/M-86 (I'd say that MS-DOS 1.x _was_, and die-hard CP/M
fanatics think MS-DOS 5.0 still _is_).

>The keyboard was large, had lots of keys with lots of interesting
>little symbols, and was very uncomfortable to type on. Besides, it had
>the habit to malfunction.

Interesting - they pointed out in their advertising that the keyboard
had been specially designed for school use - for example, it was said
to withstand having a can of Coke emptied over it.

>Oh, did I mention the floppy drives ? Standard 5.25 inch floppies ..
>but a proprietary disk format. So what, you say, since they probably
>won't be interchanging data with anyone else anyway ?

Still, in the early eighties this was normal for personal computers.
Every brand was incompatible with everything else. If you were very
lucky, your CP/M machine could read disks from another CP/M machine. 

>Another little bit of information, not about the computer as such, but
>about people's mindsets :
>
>As I mentioned, the Compis was designed for the High School market.
>Around that time, the Swedish board of education (Skol|verstyrelsen)
>was about to make the decision, which computers were suitable for use
>in education. Many computers were evaluated. IBM PC:s, I think Apple
>Macintoshen (might be wrong there tho), some others as well. 

I think this was a bit too early for Macintosh to be a realistic
alternative (too new, too "toyish", too expensive). But I think 
Apple IIe  was among the contenders.

>Several
>of the machines "passed", ad were given good evaluation results.
>The Compis passed _just barely_. It was thus judged to be adequate for
>High Schools, but still inferior to some of the other options
>available.
>
>Guess what happened : 
>
>Everyone rushed out to buy a Compis.

Of course - the computer was Swedish, which meant manuals in Swedish,
Swedish support, etc. And it was Designed For The Needs Of Swedish
Schools! At least the school people thought it'd be a good choice. 

Of course, they were wrong - the Compis machines were obsoleted in a
few years when all software turned out to be written for MS-DOS, not
CP/M-86.


It's interesting that Swedish schools (not only high schools, but our
primary schools (age 7-16) as well) made *two* very expensive mistakes
in just five years or so: 

Around 1980, when school people first discovered computers at a larger
scale, many schools bought lots of ABC 80's (16 KB Z80 system,
proprietary Basic in ROM, tape deck, slightly more expensive than an
Apple ][, and rather inferior, but SWEDISH (sheesh)), only to find
that these machines were too small to do anything more than teaching
rudimentary BASIC programming. Then they bought Compis, onbly to find
them obsolete in a few years. Sigh.


Magnus Olsson                   | \e+      /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics    |  \  Z   / q
University of Lund, Sweden      |   >----<           
Internet: magnus@thep.lu.se     |  /      \===== g
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