Just in : Olivetti M19

[SunDown79]

I just brought home this pretty small Olivetti M19.
I myself had never seen one before and perhaps in some parts of the world this is a common system, over here in the Netherlands it certainly is not

The system is in great shape and even came with the original box of the monitor and keyboard, manual, system floppies etc
The cable of keyboard is in quite bad shape though, the material is falling appart.

Also the system is very very quiet, at first I thought it wasn't working but it was just the contrast turned down all the way

Ow one silly thing, the Customer Check disk just formatted itself, it was happily testing everything and I must have missed the message saying change the disk and then it was testing the writing and reading of the disk...oops...so now I have a blanc Customer Disk grmbl

 

[SunDown79]

And some more pics

 

[Chuck(G)]

The POST display looks the same as that of the M24. Although several online descriptions say "VGA output", I suspect that they mean that the video is pretty much the same as the M24--it can be made to drive a VGA monitor, but is far from being actual VGA.

I think also sold as the Acorn M19.

 

[Caluser2000]

Very tidy. Enjoy it. Bound to be someone around here with disk image of the Customer Check disk. Apperently beasty is powered by the psu in the monitor. There was a hdd and external storage options available as well by the looks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_M19

 

[jesolo]

I just brought home this pretty small Olivetti M19.
I myself had never seen one before and perhaps in some parts of the world this is a common system, over here in the Netherlands it certainly is not

The system is in great shape and even came with the original box of the monitor and keyboard, manual, system floppies etc
The cable of keyboard is in quite bad shape though, the material is falling appart.

Also the system is very very quiet, at first I thought it wasn't working but it was just the contrast turned down all the way

Ow one silly thing, the Customer Check disk just formatted itself, it was happily testing everything and I must have missed the message saying change the disk and then it was testing the writing and reading of the disk...oops...so now I have a blanc Customer Disk grmbl

Apologies for the necro post but, I also have an Olivetti M19 and if you want a copy of the Customer Test diskette, let me know (I should probably upload the entire batch to Archive.org).
This was the first computer that my father bought for our household back in 1987 but, that computer (along with all its manuals) were donated many years ago.
I managed to acquire my current one (which is in very good condition) from a local resident along with most of the manuals but, not the Installations & Operations guide (unfortunately).
I'm planning on making a YouTube video about the M19 in the near future.

 

[1ST1]

The M19 is 8088 at 4,77 MHz, rarely some are 8 Mhz, and it has CGA graphics. Be carefull with the monitor, if you put lighning and contrast at maximum it can break the powersupply in the monitor. The M19 is the base of ETV 260 and ETV 3000 wordprocessors, and it also was sold as Acorn M19 and ETV 500, with 3.5 inch drives.

 

[Zare]

Apologies for the necro post but, I also have an Olivetti M19 and if you want a copy of the Customer Test diskette, let me know (I should probably upload the entire batch to Archive.org).
This was the first computer that my father bought for our household back in 1987 but, that computer (along with all its manuals) were donated many years ago.
I managed to acquire my current one (which is in very good condition) from a local resident along with most of the manuals but, not the Installations & Operations guide (unfortunately).
I'm planning on making a YouTube video about the M19 in the near future.

Please do this.
I have same history with the M19. My father bought me one in late 1980s or 1990.

I had three original disks. I reused them all because I was in need of diskettes.
Mine is in good working condition but floppy needs restoration, the left outside bracket covering the external ISA I lost a long time ago, and I screwed up the original keyboard back then too.

I'm also willing to network with anyone regarding M19 and collaborate on anything.
FWIW I did some 'developments' that could help somebody. My computer has broken floppy but I had QBasic on HDD. Couple of years ago I fired up the old beast again, bought a pentium 200 over ebay, booted up qbasic on both and wrote a file transfer program over serial. It's quite slow, but it's enough to move minikerm (Kermit is an old file transfer program) to M19, which can move files against even "modern" Kermits (on Win98).

If I recall correctly GW-BASIC should be on those disks. If we can verify that original package M19 comes with GW-BASIC I could rewrite the program for GW-BASIC.
The idea is that someone could retype the receiver source code right on the M19. Connecting via serial to USB to some Dosbox instance where you run the sender side, move minikerm to M19, and then use Kermit on both sides to move data in and out the machine freely.

 

[1ST1]

You wrote that by yourself? There is Laplink, you start it on the a bit more modern PC, and then you type some simple DOS command on the other PC, and then it installs Laplink on the other PC... Then connection is established and you can transfer any file quite comfortably... (The first thing to transfer is a later version of Norton Commander which also has file transfer function over serial and parallel, Norton is much more comfortable and faster than Laplink)

 

[Zare]

You can use COPY COM to dump a bunch of bytes from serial port to file. Laplink and other programs utilize this to "drop" themselves onto the old machine.
What I'm not sure of is whether DOS 3.30 supports the /b (binary mode) switch, and looking it up now makes no difference because the M19 did not have full DOS installed on it, I did not have MODE thus I couldn't set up the serial port just like that.

In QBasic you actually have event callbacks. Which is quite "modern" to use and highly ill performant in an interpreted language, but alas. The code I wrote was not above 20-30 lines. You write an implementation for ON COM event and handle some bytes passed on to you. This is why I programmed the receiver and not only the mode switcher. It's trivial, hence the idea that it's easily re-typable insitu if you have no other choice.

 

[mamaroma]

Hi, I have a m19 only machine with 20Mb hd, I would like to have copy of the original software, I can't find it, can you make images of your disks? Thank you

 

[Zare]

Be carefull with the monitor, if you put lighning and contrast at maximum it can break the powersupply in the monitor.

Break as in completely break or passively damage some component due to load?
Asking because picture is very weak here. And I was about to investigate some choices in restoring the tube.

 

[1ST1]

When broken, the monitor stays dark. Computer still runs.

 

[beberbe]

i have also a m19 from 1987 if a collectionor want it i live at 10km from Brussel
beberbe@gmail.com

 

[beberbe]

 

[1ST1]

Hello, I would be interested. I send PM.

 

[beberbe]

Hello, I would be interested. I send PM.

please give to me a normal price for this computer sending to me in PM your offer to beberbe@gmail.com
but posting the computer via DHL I am to old to make that!!!!!!

 

[A-ko]

Beautiful! these small form-factor PC clones are some of my favorite, but incredibly hard to find in my experience...

 

[fedefede]

My m19

 

[Zare]

Beautiful! these small form-factor PC clones are some of my favorite, but incredibly hard to find in my experience...

M19 is beautiful. The screen and case stand together perfectly, a lot of symmetry, straight lines in the PC and soft curves and angles on the monitor. It's an absolute fit one for another, making a clearly Italian designed package.

But, some things could've been better. They could've designed the colour package with the same effort they designed the mono. Make a screen that fits the design and don't tie it to expensive expansion option.

Btw. there's a hole in rear breakout with a note icon above it. Seems like they considered a sound chip on board too.