The Telenova Compis computer was designed to be used in swedish schools. It featured a 80186 cpu and used CP/M 86.
The name "compis" would be a synthesis of the word Computer and the swedish word
"kompis", meaning Buddy or mate. It was also a shorting for 'computer i skolan' (computer in school).
The Compis was called Scandis in Norway.
There was a small speaker in the keyboard. On the later models (Compis II) the network identity and other setup-data of the computer were also stored in the keyboard.
Compis II was also capable of running MD-DOS. Some models only had one floppy drive. It had amber monochrome display while the first model had green on black.
Svenska Datorer AB (Swedish Computers AB) went bankrupt shortly after beginning the production of the compis. Further production was taken over by the state-owned Televerket´s company TeleNova that invested large amounts of money in the project.
The following languages were available on disk : Comal, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol.
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Henrik Erlandsson's memories:
This was the computer I grew up with in college in Sweden. Like the Microbee from my high school years, it could be networked. I used that feature to program (in the excellent Pascal compiler, where you could insert assembler code) to my knowledge the first networked Tetris clone, called Fetris. (This was in 1986).
People competing against each other in the computer room caused a lot of loud screams and I remember it actually got some non-nerds hooked on these computers.
There was an excellent word processing package for the Compis which most of the students used for homework assignments. It used the special word processing shortcut keys placed around the arrow keys to great effect.
The computers were networked to a server with a 10 MB (Winchester?) harddisk, of which each student was allotted a 200kb workspace. Wow! :)
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system,
please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.
We have used this computer in physics (radioactive measurements) until today (15.9.2008). Computer still works, but geiger dont give readings any more. :(
Our students are younger than Compis-computer!!
Monday 15th September 2008
Kimmo Laitinen (Finland)
I remember using this computer back in the mid 80's when I went to school. We were exclusively let into the computer room in the school, the computers were bought but there were only one teacher understanding the concept of computers. On the other hand he had build some i/o interfaces so that we could mesure, i think it was voltage. This was my first real contact with computers and i stayed on that track...
Thursday 3rd August 2006
Martin Pålsson (Sweden)
When I was in ninth grade, in 1993-94, my school still used the Compis system. We had about 15 workstations hooked up to a server, where the 10 MB harddisk were located. The screens were black/green. We used them to practice wordprocessing, and there were also some simple games that we could play against eachother via the network. The year after these computers were scrapped and replaced with ordinary PC:s.
Monday 7th March 2005
Niklas Carlsson (Sweden)
NAME
Compis
MANUFACTURER
Telenova
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
Sweden
YEAR
1985
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke separate keyboard with editing and numeric keypads. Built-in speaker and setup data's
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