Little is known about this system. Help welcomed !
I.S.T.C. (Informatic Systèmes TéléCom) was a french company which was selling imported computers from USA, like the Apple II or the Compucolor. So it wouldn't be surprising if the ISTC 5000 was also an imported system. But which one ? We have not found the answer yet...
It is a big system with a built-in 10'' amber display (80 x 25 characters) and one or two integrated 5.25'' disk-drives (143 KB or 403 KB formated).
Following software was available : Basic (delivered with the system), Macro Assembler, Extended Basic, Fortran IV ANSI, CP/M, Cobol, Pascal...
A 5500 model was also released a bit later (1980), with slightly better features (disk drives capacity : 1 MB each)...
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.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
I used to have one of these, it was a horrible computer because of the weight.
Friday 22nd June 2007
Thomas Chambless (Earth)
Just reading the Advertisements from this funny thing and comparing with your datasheets:
In Octobre 1979 this machine did cost 28.700F, not the 36.000F you have in the Technical Information
(The advertisement from Jan 1980 gives reference to the price from Octobre 1979)
The Disk drives in the 5000 model are described as 300Kbyte disk drives, the one in the 5500 model as 2MBytes Disk drives, also containing a 20 Mbyte hdd
so actually it had not only better disk drives, but also a harddisc
Sadly there is no other information to gather from them, and i personally was 3 years old when they came out - so i cannot say much about them from my own experience, just translated the ads
Saturday 12th May 2007
Carsten Busse (Germany)
NAME
5000
MANUFACTURER
I.S.T.C. (Informatic Systèmes Télécom)
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
France
YEAR
1978
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
Basic (on disk)
KEYBOARD
Full stroke keyboard with function keys and numeric keypad.
CPU
Z80
RAM
from 24 KB to 64 KB
ROM
64 KB
TEXT MODES
80 x 24
GRAPHIC MODES
Unknown
COLORS
Unknown, but built-in display is amber only.
SOUND
Unknown
SIZE / WEIGHT
Unknown (heavy !)
I/O PORTS
from 2 to 5 x S100 compatible expansion buses, RS232 connector
BUILT IN MEDIA
Model 5000: 1 or 2 x 5.25'' disk-drives (300 KB each) Model 5500: 1 or 2 x 5.25'' disk-drives (1 MB each)
OS
CP/M ?
POWER SUPPLY
Built-in power supply
PERIPHERALS
Communication card, parallel printer, 20 MB hard-disk
