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Olivetti ETV 250 boot disk

Ghouli

New Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2013
Messages
9
Location
Finland
Recently picked up for free one of these huge wordprocessors, which basically run Wordstar on CP/M, and come with very limited environment by themselves, but hey, it's still CP/M. The only problem is that this one came without disks. I've been looking all over, but cannot find downloadable boot disk image anywhere. If someone would happen to know anyone who could provide me with a disk image, that would be awesome. My intent is to get this thing up and running, doing some word processing and maybe get some Infocom games to run on it. CRT seems to be in perfect shape with no scratches nor burn in, and seems to be crisp and without any wiggling.
 
Hello, running Zork 1, 2 and 3 on the ETV 250 is quite easy as it only uses very simple terminal control characters. The wordprocessor software is not Wordstar, it is called "MWP" (monitor word processor), special to the CP/M based ETV series machines. I didn't got Wordstar to run properly yet as none of the supported terminal emulations which comes with it are compatible with ETV 250. I have the machine, and I have the disks. The point is that my disks are german and english. I have no idea if that would work on a machine which has finlandish keyboard layout and daisywheel.

Ps.: I wonder that you haven't found my honeypot in this forum...
 
This should be in Simtel20; the (503) area code signals that this is from the early 1990s so 30 years ago.
Code:
         Sydex
          ____________________________________________________________
          P.O. Box 5700
          Eugene, OR  97405
          Voice: (503) 683-6033
          FAX:   (503) 683-1622



                                       OLICVT


          OLICVT is a "clean-up" program for Olivetti  ETV-250  .MWP  files
          transferred from CP/M to DOS format by 22DISK.  The result from a
          straight-across  transfer  to  DOS is not very usable;  this very
          short program processes the .MWP files contained on  the  ETV-250
          diskettes to a more-or-less true ASCII representation.  OLICVT is
          invoked from DOS as follows:

                                OLICVT MWP-file-name

          or, if no "special effects" notation is required in the converted
          document:

                               OLICVT /s MWP-file-name

          An  input  file name extension of .MWP is enforced,  and a trans-
          lated file having the same name,  but an  extension  of  .ASC  is
          produced.    The quickest approach to translating the files on an
          entire diskette would be to copy all  of  the  .MWP  files  using
          22Disk into a hard disk subdirectory,  then to run OLICVT on them
          en masse.  Suppose, for example,  that the hard disk subdirectory
          is  named C:\TEMP.   You could then translate all of the Olivetti
          ETV-250 files in this subdirectory with the  following  DOS  com-
          mand:

                    OLICVT C:\TEMP\*

          It's possible to make the whole affair a one-step command process
          by creating the following DOS batch file (let's call it OLI.BAT)

                    CTOD /OLI3 B:*.MWP C:\TEMP
                    OLICVT C:\TEMP\*
                    DEL C:\TEMP\*.MWP

          We  assume  here  that  your  3.5"  diskette drive is B: and that
          OLI.BAT, 22DISK and OLICVT reside in the same subdirectory.

          You'll find that most documents have been  translated  perfectly.
          There  are a few functions peculiar to the ETV-250 word processor
          and fonts that may cause some of the page and line breaks  to  be
          slightly  off.    There are no exact correspondents in the IBM PC
          character set to  certain  special  characters  in  the  Olivetti
          character set.   Where possible,  the closest equivalent from the
          PC character set is  substituted.    In  the  few  untranslatable
          cases,  the  name of the character,  enclosed in brackets ([]) is
          inserted.   In addition,  typographic directions,  such as [begin
          underline]  will  be  inserted in the same manner,  unless the /s
          switch has been specified in the OLICVT command  line,  as  noted
          above.

          If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Sydex.
 
Hi, looked at your honeypot when I got the machine but didn't see any links to disk images and since the topic was couple of years old decided to ask here. But good to see you're still around! If you would be willing to share preferably both German and English versions that would be really nice! Would like to get this machine booting so I can dig a bit deeper and see what kind of stuff I get running on it. Also the service manual for ETV 250 would be really helpful as the printer side seems to require some work.
 
Does it ask for diskette to boot? If yes, the printer basically is Ok as it could be initialized.

The most important maintenance you have to do in the printer is to clean up the ribbon transport mechanism on the print head. Remove the old grease and fat and lubricate.
 
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