website/content/museum/ontel-op-1.md

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Ontel OP-1	Computers	Professional Computer	U.S.A.	1975	8008	name image company company_name specs tabs adverts links comments oc_id source OP-1 /media/museum/photos/ontel_op1_system_s1.jpg /companies/ontel Ontel label value NAME OP-1 label value MANUFACTURER Ontel label value TYPE Professional Computer label value ORIGIN U.S.A. label value YEAR 1975 label value END OF PRODUCTION Appx 1984 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE Most work was done in Assembly, Microsoft Basic and Fortran label value KEYBOARD Full size detachable QWERTY with many function keys\ (Detachable keyboard was unique at that time) label value CPU 8008 / 8080 / 8085 label value SPEED 1 to 10 MHz label value RAM 16 / 32 / 48 / 64 KB (later models had a 256 KB memory option) label value ROM 256 Byte to 64 KB. The system bios was contained in only 256 bytes of ROM, enough to boot from a floppy! label value TEXT MODES 80 chars x 24 liges label value GRAPHIC MODES No graphics label value COLORS Monochrome label value SIZE / WEIGHT Large footprint / Weight depending on configuration, up to 50 pounds label value I/O PORTS Up to 5 serial DB-25 for printers, drives, serial RS-232, etc. depending on system configuration label value POWER SUPPLY Very large linear power supply. From 1981, small switching power supply label value PERIPHERALS 10 card cage - 1 cpu card, 1 video card, 1 or 2 memory cards, 1 DMA card, up to 4 peripheral controllers, 1 not used label value PRICE from $2500 to over $10,000 depending on configuration/features adverts links title subtitle text image ONTEL ADVERT #1 Thanks also to **Bob Hanrahan** for these pictures /media/museum/pubs/ontel_amigo_pub_s1.jpg title subtitle text image ONTEL ADVERT #2 /media/museum/pubs/ontel_amigo_pub_s2.jpg title url text Interesting and detailed Ontel pages http://www.msu.edu/~mrr/mycomp/ontel/ontframe.htm author date text Guy Spriet (Rye, New-York ) Monday 12th July 2021 TRUE,,, Yes, ONTEL was a wonderful partner. I had to design a full computer system named GS132 for a French based company specialized in the Graphic industry (1976) and the team at Ontel had the most intelligent terminal one can dream of. It helped to decentralize the intelligence at the operator level, thus making the software design much easier at the CPU level. I have worked in cooperation with many OEM manufacturers and I can tell, Ontel''s team was exceptional. Only good memories. author date text James Intriglia (Tampa, FL / USA)) Friday 7th June 2019 Fresh out of Electronic Engineering Technology college, I was hired by Bill Ohm and employed as an Instructor by Ontel when it was Owned by Caesars World (1980-1981?). For a period of time, I authored a customer newsletter for Ontel using an OP-1 computer that supported our customer education team and our clients. I taught Ontel customers how to use the OP/1 and it''s software applications to manage various aspects of their business. The OP-1''s in our office space were supported by CDC Hawk and Phoenix hard disk drives, the size of a washing machine. The CDC Hawk had an amazing 20MB storage capacity, while the more state-of-the art Phoenix drive had a massive 40MB storage capacity, with removable hard disk packs. Little did I know that the technology I was working with would born an entire new industry led by Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak. Great to have the privilege of working with people and technology that pre-dated Microsoft and the IBM personal computer! author date text Gregory Nutt (Costa Rica) Monday 4th June 2018 My first job was programming Ontel terminal applications for the Illinois Law Enforcement commissions in 1979. With HP mainframes. Great memories. author date text Tom Lawrence (Ohio, USA) Wednesday 29th November 2017 I was an end user of Ontel computers. As an electronic technician who learned how to program applications on Ontel computers, I can say I really loved these systems - solid and pretty reliable We primarily used the dual 8" floppy drives and CDC Hawk drives. I have actually thought about looking for one as a personal museum piece. We also used to use the CDC 9448 CMD (Pheonix Drives) disk drives. We thought the 96 MBytes would be all that anyone would ever need for storage. LOL! I can remember when the disk head access on those drives was so aggressive during certain extensive data searches that the drive actually walked its way across the floor and without crashing the drive heads. author date text Phil Fedele (Somerset NJ / USA) Wednesday 28th June 2017 From my 2013 posting, forgot to mention the operations support of the OP-1 systems included troubleshooting$fixing$replacing parts:\ Picture-tubes, fly-back transformers, capacitors, resisters, keys, keyboards, circuit board sockets, I/O ports... pretty much anything and everything on the OP-1 !! author date text Khalid Khan, ONTEL Test Technician Thursday 18th June 2015 from Test Technician KHALID KHAN, Ontel Corp, Woodbury: 1978-80. email: videotemple1970@gmail.com: I was a night-shift technician hired by TOM CORNETTO, the supervisor. First day I met PAUL MATULONIS a lanky bearded guy who was a very intelligent decent human being, and a helpful friend. He trained me in the schematics and trouble-shooting of the 1164 pc board, and in the use of the WETTEST software routine to check it. Mostly it turned out that boards failed because of solder shorts at back on the reverse side. Soon, we all figured that out, and became PhDs on that, and could fix ANY board without looking at the schematics or hooking up the Oscilloscope. The test floor was very social and we made good friends as well as sometimes argued too. This was 1970s New York Saturday Night Fever disco era. There were some nice chicks at Ontel. At times we used to find excuses to stand near the pc-board repair girls and joke with them and get some double-meaning answers. A real fun girl was JENNIFER STONE who talked bawdy at times and provided fun. At other times management caught some girls and guys making out in car in the parking lot. Other girls JUANITA and JESSE. The wife of one of the executives was DEBBIE BORSCINO, who was a hottie everyone noted. Among my friends was BOB SHORT, a Karate black belt under Sensei Teriyuki Higa of Okinawa Kenpo Karate School in Hempstead. Bob looked exactly like actor/body builder William Smith. Another friend was STEVE RICARDI who also trained in Kenpo Karate under master Higa. You could get a job at Ontel Corp if you just knew how a 74F74 Flip-Flop chip worked. In Long Island snow fall, going back at night at end of 2nd Shift, in my Buick LeSabre, my car used to slide sideways on the road. Sometimes, I stopped somewhere to get a 50 cent slice of Pizza and a cup of hot chocolate. Much later, I met Bob Short again in Silicon Valley in California, one day when I was teaching Filipino stick-fighting Serrada Eskrima at Tony Janovich''s Danzen-Ryu School in Santa Clara in San Francisco south-bay Silicon Valley area, when master Bob Short walked in. I eventually ended up in Hollywood working as a on-set technician at low-budget films, and at glamor films. I met many famous stars, and was personal assistant to Russ Meyers'' heroine. author date text Alberto Frenicchi (Italia) Sunday 29th March 2015 During the years ''78 to 80'' , I was working for the italian Company Olivetti and together with Liciano Mazzeo, I was in charge of the quality assurance of OEM products. From Ontel we have been buying a word processor versione of the OPPO.1, I travelled a lot at that times to Woodbury, almost every month, and I had the privilege to know David Ophir, Moshe Nadby, David Shiffer, Frank Kirby, Bruce Komusin and many other ingeneers which I don''t remember the name of.\ Everybody have been very good cooperative people and I''ve spent an unforgettable time with them from both the view points: professional and friendly.\ All my greetings to all the people that shares with me the memorie of the Company and of the people that worked in it.\ Alberto author date text Bill March (lancaster pa) Thursday 5th March 2015 I was the Credit Manager at Ontel In my position I met with all the customers such as LATIN DATA ,AEG TELEFUNKEN , SACO,etc .I also remember BRIAN STEPHENS,JOHN EMMERICK,DOM BONNAMO,DAVE HANLON,and manny more nice persons. I was one a few that were transfered to Tewsbury MA when VISUAL took over .The day i arrived in MA. they were talking of going bankrupt .I stayed a year and watched the company be destroyed.. author date text Ken Simpson Friday 8th August 2014 Worked Ontel Customer Service from about 1978 to 1983. Worked as Customer Service Engineer then Customer Service Supervisor until Visual Technologies took them over and the big lay-off''s began. Imagine a desk top, stand alone, word processor basically a desk top computer back in the 70''s. author date text John Kirby Wednesday 26th March 2014 My father was VP of Sale and Marketing during the 70s and sold this machine. He helped develop the Ontel Amigo and remembers when a young Bill Gates came to visit the plant and met with Ed Heinze. author date text Jochen Emmes (Germany) Wednesday 26th March 2014 Hi,\ I have a Telefunken version of this machine, very similar or even the same model like Andy Collins. Unfortunately the cable to connect the double 8 " disk drive is missing and even when I can get this fixed I will still miss a suitable disk (I''ve got several 8" floppy disks but not for the Telefunken 5200). When I powered up the system it came whith a black screen,\ no reaction to any keypress - maybe this is normal with no floppy drive connected. At least the were no exploding capacitors nor the smell of something burning. If anyone has some hints for me (f.e. the wiring of the floppy cable) please email me at: jochen dot emmes at gmail dot com author date text Ian Hayden (UK) Friday 28th February 2014 I serviced these things when I briefly worked at General Computer systems (UK) Ltd in the very early 80''s. GCS did sales and support for ONTEL. I remember they were quite heavy! and most of the ones we saw were used for early Word processing applications, always some nice secretaries around to chat up during a service visit. In those days we were always made a cup of coffee and looked after on our visits. author date text Craig Miller (NYC, USA) Friday 24th January 2014 This was my first computer. My father brought one home when I was about 10 years old. After playing the classic game "hunt the wampus" for a while, I taught myself BASIC and wrote some software to help me keep track of my paper route. This eventually led to a career in software engineering. Thanks so much to Ontel! author date text Mark Moore (High Wycombe, England) Thursday 13rd June 2013 Interesting stuff, used to program one of these in OPL,was a builders billing system, didn''t realise it used Isam (I guess like C-Isam from Unix?).\ In our spare time we used to write games in MS Basic lol\ Great machine author date text Dave Bossi (Barnegat Light, NJ) Monday 4th March 2013 SACBOL - Boy does this take me back! We used these to develop firmware for medical dispensing machines and I wrote an inventory management system in SACBOL. Great machines that did tend to get a bit warm if you have a lot of memory installed. author date text Bill Holmes (Alachua, Fl. USA) Thursday 21st February 2013 I wa one of Phil Fedele''s users. I remember this system replacing our "old technology" of a Flexowriter using IBM punch cards and paper tape, the Paper Tape Reader, and a Magnetic Tape Base in 1978 to process our work to a main frame via a dial-up modem. Pretty high tech at the time. I agree with Phil, the OP-1 were work horses. author date text Phil Fedele (Somerset NJ, USA) Wednesday 20th February 2013 I was hired by Westinghouse Lamps (soon to be Philips Lighting) in Bloomfield NJ back in Feb 1983 (I was 19 !). My job in the door was to be the sole repair / support person for a nationwide network of OP-1 / 64 terminals. We had a staff programmer who wrote the code and I burned the new programming options via an EEPROM programmer (and erased the chips too for new programs). We called them W.I.T. Westinghouse Intelligent Terminals and they connected to our IBM mainframe system via bi-sync protocol for batch entry. When our modems lines were down around the country, the field could still enter until the OP-1/64 buffer was full !\ We ran them in our company for almost 10 years !\ Great systems. author date text Fred Kohler (South Africa) Tuesday 12th February 2013 I worked with Steve Millard. and was the design engineer. I modified the Op/70 and added a second PCB on pins mainly through the 8085 CPU and the extra board had 2 CPU''s 8085 and the then new 8088 with added memory so we had an extra 256K memory. Using a memory map logic the 8085 was able to get at the extra memory and of course the 8088 had direct access. The SACBOL was modified so part of it ran in the 8085 and part in the 8088. When the machine booted up it was the standert OP1/70. author date text Andy Collins (United Kingdom) Monday 11th February 2013 I have the Telefunken version of these machine. Sadly mine isn''t working at the moment but I hope to get it going when I can. It''s a weighty beast of a thing with a card cage with wire-wrap at the back. The cards seem to have specific slots that they work in as wiring at the back runs from certain pins on each card to connectors on the back. author date text Steve Millard (South Africa) Sunday 2nd December 2012 An amazing machine ahead of its time. I defined and wrote the Sacbol (OPL) language, Sacmft, Isam as well as the CDC emulators. Nice to know that it was used world wide by companies like AEG ,Wallgreens, CDC and the like. We had major customers in South Africa running real time applications. author date text Daniel (Argentina) Saturday 29th September 2012 I used to work with OP 1, programming sacbol software applications.\ you remember sacbol. dont u?\ Here in Argentina, it was the first version of screen PC available to the most of the middle companies range.\ Just as I got my degree, I began to work with OP1 So I could leave my other love: burroughs L4000\ Ohohoh I feel like I m getting old. author date text Ian McAlister (South Africa) Wednesday 23rd May 2012 We used Ontels in the ''80s as a platform to run access control and Time and Attendace systems for large gold mines - up to 50,000 employees clocking in real time! The company was Saco Systems and was based in Johannesburg, South Africa. An amazing machine for its time! 1150 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230223071941/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=1150 2023-02-23

About Ontel OP-1 systems and Ontel company, Bob Hanrahan sent us this testimony:

Memories of Ontel, Woodbury NY

I worked for Ontel Corporation from 1979 to 1982, designing various controller boards for their line of 8008/8080/8085 based computer terminals.

The OP-1 computer family included their high end 64K DRAM system called the OP-1/64. The OP-1/64 had a 10 card backplane (similar to VME) allowing it to be configured as a terminal, word processor, stand alone computer, etc.
The OP-1/64 (also available as a downgraded version OP-1/32 or 48 for 32K or 48K DRAM) was later replaced by the OP-1/70 model. The 8080 CPU card and (2) 32Kbyte RAM memory cards were replaced with a single 8085 based CPU board with on-board 64Kbyte dynamic memory.
The OP-1 family employed a discrete DMA controller (Direct Memory Access) allowing fast direct memory transfers to/from peripheral controllers, significantly reducing CPU overhead for such tasks. For Word Processing applications Ontel provided a controller called a Word Move Controller (earlier called a Byte String Controller) which provided a method of rapidly inserting or removing characters (bytes) to/from memory for very efficient text editing.
The Intel CPU performance of that era was not powerful enough to perform these tasks using software in a reasonable amount of time. CPU based string moves for text editing would cause an unacceptable lag when an operator hit the insert or delete keys. The DMA controller performed transfers at 11 µSec/byte using a TTL based state machine. I remember designing a prototype DMA controller which moved data at 1.8 µSec/byte, considered fast for 1981! Ontel was ahead of its time in many areas, advanced Word Processing being one of them.

During 1981, the OP-1/70 was joined by a lower cost OP-1/R single board version (no card cage) which employed custom IC’s developed by the staff at Ontel. The OP-1/R (R stood for remote) looked the same as its big brother yet it could only support a single peripheral controller board, thus it was typically configured as a remote slave terminal with basic features.
Later we introduced the OP-1/50 which included 2 integrated 5.25" floppy drives with a smaller card cage in the same plastics. Finally around 1982 we introduced the OP-1/15 which was the first system to take on a new more modern look. The OP-1/15 used the same basic OP-1 backplane architecture, saving space with a much smaller and lighter switching power supply.

The OP-1 was custom configured and often custom painted for a specific customer. Large customers included Olivetti, Telefunken, CDC, would sell the systems with their own software for a specific application under their own name.
The Ontel systems were designed and built by a group of very talented (and fun) employees in Woodbury NY (Long Island). Much adrenalin ran through the company, from engineering right down to the production floor all knew we were involved with something big, something that would grow over time.
Ontel expanded rapidly during the period from 1979 to 1982, from about 200 employees (15 engineers) to about 900 (90 engineers). The founder and president at that time was David Ophire (where the system name OP-1 came from) who I believe came out of ADDS. During 1981 the company was sold from Ceasers World (owners of Ceasers Palace) to a group whose name escapes me. David and other executives were replaced by a new management team which seemed to dampen the innovative culture that existed at the time.

During 1982 we were planning to move to a higher performance (and cost) 16 bit system which was to employ new color graphics technology becoming available in new video IC’s. We evaluated the Zilog Z8000, Mot 68000, NS 16000 (later called the 32000), and the Intel 8086. Intel won, not based on performance. I don’t believe a 16 bit machine was ever sold by Ontel.

Ontel had a very strong software team who designed a very sophisticated development platform, allowing customers and third party programmers to develop system applications. The team also developed diagnostics that provided sophisticated self test and debug facilities used to ensure high quality in a system of this complexity.
The Ontel OP-1 series employed an internally developed Operating System which was ported to a tape drive during their early year, then to an external 8" floppy, and later 5.25" floppy drives. Options included large CDC drive systems for large data center applications (96 MByte total on 6 large 18” platters!).
The DOS looked much like the MS-DOS PC development platform not yet developed at that time. The team ported an early version of MS Basic, I recall when Bill Gates and Paul Allen visited Ontel to install and sell the package around 1980, kids at that time. During the peak we were selling around 10K systems/year. Around 1982 the company was sold to Visual Technology, a Boston based company who eventually closed the doors on the Woodbury Long Island facility.

We learned a lot at Ontel and I truly enjoyed the time shared with so many great people. Having lost contact with all but a few, I still think about many of them.