Compis
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Compis (Swedish name), Scandis (Norwegian name) was a computer system designed and sold to schools in the 1980s. Since it was intended for educational use, it received the name Compis, which is short for COMPuter In School. The name can also be interpreted as a pun on the Swedish word kompis, meaning friend or pal. The development was started by Svenska Datorer and was overtaken by TeleNova when the former went bankrupt. The computer was distributed by Esselte and mostly marketed towards, and sold to, Swedish and Norwegian gymnasium-level schools.
The computer was based on the Intel 80186 CPU and with CP/M-86 as the operating system in ROM (although it could also run MS-DOS from disk). The computer had a wide selection of ports, including one for a light pen. The computer was criticized from the start, and as the move to IBM PC compability came it was left behind and the project was cancelled in 1988 although it was in use well into the 1990s.
Notable applications being run on the Compis in an educational environment was:
- COMAL interpreter
- Turbo Pascal 3.0 compiler, under the name Scandis-Pascal
- WordStar word processor
Some schools had simple local area networks of Scandis computers, where 10–20 machines shared one hard disk of typically 10MB capacity.
Compis was a special edition of Skoda Fabia for Sweden only. Škoda Auto presented Compis in 2001, to celebrate 5 years of presence on the Swedish market.
See also: Education in Sweden