Ohio Challenger 2P and its 4 KB RAM

Article by Eric Bangman, Managing Editor of Ars Technica Magazine



I already noticed him out of the corner of my eye when I walked past him to geometry lessons, but now I had to enter the school computer class for the first time.



It was September 1980 and my first year at Gateway High School went somersault, even before the first week of the first semester had time to finish. I signed up for Russian classes, which I needed to take a bus to a nearby school in Aurora, Colorado. My joyful anticipation of starting to learn the language of the enemy at the peak of the Cold War seriously faded when only four students showed up for the first lesson. Such low attendance led to the fact that Russian lessons were canceled after a few days, and I had to revise my schedule. I replaced Russian with Latin, which eliminated the need for daily bus trips, and also opened in my schedule another free place for introduction to computer programming.



My children hardly understand this, but in 1980, the only computers I could run into every day were calculators or video games. Of course, at school I could periodically see the mainframe, but I myself talked to the computer either using a clone of the Intellivision game console under the Sears brand, or in the local slot machine hall.



The computers in Gateway's lab were nothing like what I had seen before. These were blue metal boxes with black keyboards and 9 "black-and-white televisions on top. Several of them were connected to the teletype. Next to them were cheap cassette players chained to their desks. Large square letters informed us that these were Ohio Scientific Challenger 2P computers .



At a price of $ 495, the Challenger 2P boasted an incredible 4 KB of RAM, a 32x32 character text display and Microsoft BASIC support. All this worked on the MOS Technology 6502 processor with a clock frequency of 1 MHz. Even by those standards, such specifications were far from the most powerful. Apple Computer] [+ came out in the same 1979 as 2P, however, it offered 16 KB of RAM and 16 colors for a 40x48 character display. However, this did not bother me, since I got access to the computer. And I could do whatever I wanted.





Using one of the Challenger 2P computers at Gateway High School in 1980



We started our training with simple programs at BASIC:

10 A=1 20 B=10 30 A=A+1 40 C=A*B 50 IF A>10 THEN GOTO 80 60 ?A" X "B" = "C 70 GOTO 30 80 END
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
     

Then we switched to FOR / NEXT loops:

 10 B=10 20 FOR A=1 TO 10 30 C=A*B 40 ?A" X "B" = "C 50 NEXT A
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
     

Bored? Maybe. But one day I wandered into a computer class during lunch and saw a high school student playing a kind of game. Something similar to Enterprise was moving around the TV screen by tapping the keyboard in an attempt to dodge a bunch of stars (*). The game was primitive even compared to my neighbor's Atari 2600, but this student wrote it on his own.



The game on a 9 "black and white TV used a kilobyte of memory. The 32x32 display worked with 1024 characters, but only 576 of them were shown (the rest were reserved in the security buffer). It was possible to display data directly on the display, to check if a certain place on the screen was occupied by a certain symbol, and move the symbols on the display using the keyboard, and it immediately and forever dragged me on.





On Challenger 2P, in addition to ASCII characters, there were also graphic



My free time at school started to mix Star Wars and Star Trek universes by writing a two-player game where Enterprise was fighting TIE Fighter (which was indicated by the left and right arrow symbols). If a shot from the phaser (hyphen) of the Enterprise hit the target, the TIE fighter exploded - well, it didn’t quite explode, it turned into a couple of stars.



An excerpt from the Tank For Two game for Challenger 2P gives an idea of ​​what my code looked like:

 390 POKE P1,TA(T1) 400 FOR X=1TO3:IF F1=0 THEN 460 410 IF B1<>P1 THEN POKE B1,32 420 P=PEEK(B1+M1):IF P=161 THEN F1=0:GOTO 460 430 B1=B1+M1:POKE B1,BD(T1) 440 IF P=TA(T2)THEN F1=0:B1=P1:S1=S1+1:GOTO 460 450 IF B1C2 THEN F1=0 460 IF F2=0 THEN 520
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
        
        
        
      
      

        
        
        
      

    
     

The POKE command was used to display a specific character on the screen; the variable to the left of the comma indicated the place in memory, and to the right the symbol to be displayed. PEEK was used to read the contents of a point in memory, and determined whether a TIE fighter laser shot hit the Enterprise. In 1980, for a high school student, this was dizzying.



Considering who I work today, it is not surprising that I spent all the time in the computer class. I started buying and subscribing to computer magazines, manually entered text games like Hunt the Wumpus and saved them in a gradually growing library of cassettes. If I forgot to bring a cassette with me, there was always the option to print the program on a teletype in the form of a sequence of convex points. Booting from coils did not always work well, so just in case, I printed my original code on a loud teletype.



On Christmas holidays, I was even allowed to take one computer with his b / w TV home. Unfortunately, I lost two days with a computer due to a fused 2P fuse - yes, a real glass fuse in the form of a tube.



I really wanted to have my own Challenger. Although they sold Atari 400 at the electronics store in Aurora Mall and TRS-80 at Radio Shack, I always went strictly to the JCPenney store, and then to his electronics department. And there, in all its colorful glory, stood the Challenger 4P for $ 600. But, despite all my attempts, my mother was not impressed by the possibilities of a personal computer that are applicable in everyday life, and all my pleas remained unanswered. Only in the following year I was able to buy my first computer, Timex Sinclair ZX80 in the form of a kit for self-assembly, which I could not use because of unsuccessful soldering.





I'm in the top row on the right



In the second year of my studies, Ohio Scientific computers already disappeared, giving way to Apple] [and Apple] [+ computers with 5-1 / 2 "drives and monochrome green monitors. And although I was upset by the lack of familiar blue boxes, I quickly realized that Apple computers were much more powerful.



Thirty years later, Ohio Scientific exists only in memory. Challenger 2P was followed by the release of the color version 4P, and then version 8P, after which the company was bought in 1981, and the PC line was canceled. Unfortunately, my programming skills also remained in my memory, but the experience was not in vain. If more children in Colorado would like to learn to speak Russian, my life could be completely different. But I had the opportunity to cultivate a love for computers, which I could not only use, but also play with them, create something based on them and ultimately control them.