In 1980, the ABC 80 used in the schools was regarded as becoming obsolete, and the National Swedish Board for Technical Development (Styrelsen för teknisk utveckling) was tasked to find a replacement.

In 1981, the procurement Tudis (Teknikupphandlingsprojekt Datorn i Skolan) was launched, and while the decision was controversial, Svenska Datorer AB was awarded the contract with development beginning in 1982.

The computer was distributed by Esselte and exclusively marketed towards, and sold to, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish schools, mainly high stage (year 7-9) and gymnasium-level.

The Compis project was criticized from the start, and as the move to IBM PC compatibility came it was left behind and finally cancelled in 1988 although it was in use well into the 1990s.

Notable applications being run on the Compis in an educational environment was: Some schools had simple local area networks of Compis/Scandis computers, in which 10–20 machines shared one hard disk with a typical capacity of 10MB.