dongfeng
Veteran Member
I have a story about an Olivetti Business Computer System! I've never seen another one, so it might be interesting, but unfortunately my Olivetti no longer exists
My Grandfather bought it in about 1978, I think for around £3,000 (I wasn't born then...). The computer was an Olivetti BCS 2030, it was used in the company and caught on fire in 1994 , but was repaired and used until it until 1996, when they ran out of discs, ink and storage cards.
It was an intriguing piece of equipment, having a long thin screen that scrolled the text. The company used it to keep track of account records. The details were kept on a A4-sized card that had a magnetic strip along one side, when you wanted to add some transaction to it, you put the card in the slot and it came back out with the new details printed on it, and (I assume) the new information stored on the magnetic strip.
It also had a "Mini Disc" drive!! But these mini disc are not the same as today's mini disc. They were grey and looked liked the inside of a 3.5" floppy. You put it in a slot in the disc drive and it whirred around...
The whole thing was the size of a desk. I remember as a child looking at it when I visited the company and thinking it was so cool to have a key start!!! It made a really bog noise when you turned it on.
Unfortunately this story has a sad ending. In 1996 when the computer was replaced with a 166MHz Pentium running Windows 95 (8)), the Olivetti was put in a leaky storage room. It was going to be thrown away, but in 1999 I "rescued" it and brought it home where it sat on my parents driveway under a tarpaulin. Unfortunately it no longer worked. I advertised it on the Internet and in newspapers "Free to collector" for 2 years, but nobody phoned up.
I took it to the tip in 2001
I did keep the keyboard, minidisc drive and some internal cards though! I still have lots of discs and cards (used), and I think the operating manuals!!
It was a very cool computer system, I just wish I could have kept it... Are there any of these surviving out there?
Here's a photo!
My Grandfather bought it in about 1978, I think for around £3,000 (I wasn't born then...). The computer was an Olivetti BCS 2030, it was used in the company and caught on fire in 1994 , but was repaired and used until it until 1996, when they ran out of discs, ink and storage cards.
It was an intriguing piece of equipment, having a long thin screen that scrolled the text. The company used it to keep track of account records. The details were kept on a A4-sized card that had a magnetic strip along one side, when you wanted to add some transaction to it, you put the card in the slot and it came back out with the new details printed on it, and (I assume) the new information stored on the magnetic strip.
It also had a "Mini Disc" drive!! But these mini disc are not the same as today's mini disc. They were grey and looked liked the inside of a 3.5" floppy. You put it in a slot in the disc drive and it whirred around...
The whole thing was the size of a desk. I remember as a child looking at it when I visited the company and thinking it was so cool to have a key start!!! It made a really bog noise when you turned it on.
Unfortunately this story has a sad ending. In 1996 when the computer was replaced with a 166MHz Pentium running Windows 95 (8)), the Olivetti was put in a leaky storage room. It was going to be thrown away, but in 1999 I "rescued" it and brought it home where it sat on my parents driveway under a tarpaulin. Unfortunately it no longer worked. I advertised it on the Internet and in newspapers "Free to collector" for 2 years, but nobody phoned up.
I took it to the tip in 2001
I did keep the keyboard, minidisc drive and some internal cards though! I still have lots of discs and cards (used), and I think the operating manuals!!
It was a very cool computer system, I just wish I could have kept it... Are there any of these surviving out there?
Here's a photo!