1ST1
Veteran Member
Hello, this is a thread to attract enthusiasts who own such system or which are generally interested in these and are interested to swap experiences, knowledge and software for these.
Introduction
ETV and ETS are Olivetti's wordprocessing systems produced between 1980 and 1986 based on CP/M and up to 1992 with MS-DOS or even Win 3.0 as their operation system and they are quite special. The CP/M based ETV machines (and CWP-1) are based on Z80 processor (and their successors from Hitachi) and ETS are based on 8086/80186, so they run CP/M-86 (they are not compatible to MS-DOS!).
(Later ETV systems, based on i8088, NEC V40 and even i80286 are running MS-DOS: ETV 260, ETV 500, ETV 2700, ETV 2900, ETV 3000, ETV 4000s, VM 2000, Editor 100, Triumph Adler OPS 400 (same as ETV 4000s))
The CP/M based ETV machines have their own wordprocessing software called "Olitext-MWP" and they use internal daiswheel printer or external typewriter of the ET series as the printer (and keyboard). There were ROM-based machines, and a few which boots CP/M from diskette. The ROM based machines can not run other software as no command line is available. For ETS series I don't have much knowledge, I don't have one yet, they are even much more rare than ETV machines.
The CP/M system software delivered with the ETV machines which do boot from diskette is very basic, only pip and stat included on the disks. But I was able to locate some more tools for them, like a format tool for ethe ETV 300 (but not the others), mbasic, an MWP<->TXT converter and a few more. Generic CP/M standard tools from other CP/M 2.2 systems often didn't run on the ETV machines.
What is not known yet is what kind of terminal emulation these CP/M based systems use on the screen to configure 3rd party software like Wordstar to display correctly. It's not one of the standards like VT52/100. So the only game I got to run until now was ZORK 1-3 as this just uses CR/LF. But the ETV systems video system is able to do more, like cursor positioning, bold, italic inverse and highlight text attributes as can be seen inside MWP. (The DOS machines are just fine, they have CGA or VGA graphics)
The single sided floppy formats of all CP/M machines are well known by the standard tools like PC-Alien, Omnidisk, 22disk, etc. But there is exception, ETV210s and CWP-1 can alternatively use double sided format which is not yet defined in these tools. Olivetti did not provide disk format tools for the most of these machines to the customers, they prefered to sell preformatted disks to the clients. So the format tool for ETV 300 until now is a big exception. But if you want to format disks for the others, get a CWP-1, it can do within it's ROM based wordprocessor software. Or use some of the mentioned floppy tools for MS-DOS PC.
Overview of the CP/M based systems:
Integrated ETV systems
Computer, printer, keyboard all in one case, all of them have 3,5 inch drives, 360 or 720 kB.
Model overview:
ETV/ETS Extension boxes for ET series typewriters.
That means, to use these PC lookalike boxes you need an ET series office typewriter which has the optionally installed "ETV kit" or the different "ETS-kit". ETV-kit is for ETV. ETS-kit is for ETS, and they are incompatible to each other. The "ETV kit" consists of an serial interface (female plug) (which usually has it's own CPU) and some key caps to extend the keyboard of the ET series typewriters. The following machines could be extended with "ETV kit" or "ETS kit": ET 121, ET 225, ET 111, ET 112, ET 115, ET 116. (and all ET 2xxx for MS-DOS based ETV 2900 / VM 2900). The "ETS kit" contains a different serial interface (male plug) and an extra keyboard which is mounted at the right side of the ET keyboard. The typewriter acts like keyboard and printer to these ETV or ETS systems.
Please note, if you just have the ETV or ETS box, and you don't have the matching typewriter (and/or the separate ETS keyboard), you can't use it, as the serial protocol is not documented. You can't just buy "any" of the mentioned ET series typewriters, they usually don't have the optional ETV/ETS kit. If you see one which has the ETV/ETS kit, hurry up and grab it (regardless of the price...), they are really rare, you may see only one in 10 years in your country... Maybe italians are a bit more lucky... And you won't find a separate "ETV kit" or "ETS kit" anywhere to modify any ET series typewriter. The kits are individual to each model of ET series typewriter, that makes it even more difficult, and some are difficult to setup as you have to install addon bord to the baseboard of the typewriter, or you have to add EPROMs to the base board, etc. Only ET 112/116 would be easy, just plug it into the rear slot of the machine, that's it.
Besides the ETV kit there are also other LCU (lince communication unit) serial interfaces available to some of the ET series, the hardware is maybe the same, but different firmware, not compatible. And if you mix MWP language version with typewriter of other language that's also quite useless as you will type wrong characters and it will print wrong characters... So, to repeat it, if you have ETV 300/350 without the matching typewriter, and you see one in your country, hurry up and get it. How to remember an ET series with ETV kit? Some have a silver square sticker ontop, with the magic letters "ETV 300" or "ETV 350". They have cursor keys. They have serial interface at the rear.
So once you have the ET series typewriter with the matching ETV/ETS-kit, you can be quite happy. The best thing is to get them together...
One more thing: If the typewriter is broken, you can buy another of the same model and swap all things over to fix it. But take care on ET 121 and ET 225, you need to align the tabulation and daisywheel selector motor to the baseboard electronics, otherwise the machine won't work. This is a special task which needs knwoledge of the service manual of the machine. (ask me)
Models running Z80 CP/M
Both models were available as floppy bootable, and rarely ROM based, with an extra add on card.
Models running CP/M-86
The ETS nees typewriter with ETS-Kit, or they have their own keyboard, ... or .... even both! The ETS machines originally were designed by Syntrex Inc. Eatontown, New Jersey, USA. They could be connected to a central harddisk storage system of 10/20 MB which supported up to 8 or 16 ETS systems at the same time. They also could be used with a few Olivetti daiswheel or dot matrix printers of the PR- and DY-series.
(I don't have anything for ETS, as I don't have one yet. Only a very little number of systems survied, I only know about 2 owners world wide)
Monitors for the ETVs
As mentioned, I can't tell much about ETS, but don't expect standard signals and standard video frequencies. But ETV 240, 250 and 350 used the same compact 12" monitor which could be mounted comfortably on a an arm which was fixed to the table. The ETV 300 has a different monitor but as far as I remember, it also could be connected to ETV 350, so it should be compatible to 240/250 as well. I never tryed to swap them, but they all have the same DB9 connector which is also providing power to the monitor, try at your own risk and share your experience here. CWP-1 is using a completely different monitor having a 7 pin DIN connector, it looks similar to the CRT-2700 of ETV 2700 and Editor 100, but it's not the same. ETV 260 monitor looks the same as the 240/250/350 one, but it has light grey coloor and that one is CGA with strange (slower) frequency, so you can't use it. The CRT tubes in ETV 240/250 (and 260) are usually with green phosphor, but I once have seen white ones in ebay offers)
Available Software for ETV 250, 300, 350
MWP 2.0 for ETV 300 in german language. Works fine with ET 121. Has some dead keys (non alphanumeric ones) and some ASCII conversion problems with ET 225. (both are with 458 national german ROM)
MWP 3.0 for ETV 300 in italian language. Switches the typewriter to italian keyboard layout, needs also italian daiswheel (001 national language code) to print correct characters, works with both ET 121 and 225. But all is in italian.
MWP 3.0 for ETV 250 in german language. (Doesn't run nice on ETV 300)
sformat.com for ETV 300 can format it's diskette format
mbasic.com
crlf.com to convert files between ascii.txt to mwp file format, forth and back
some extra CP/M commands, but not many, like assembler, etc.
zork 1, zork 2, zork 3, this is generic version, not special for ETV systems
Much more software could be used, if we know what kind of terminal emulation these ETVs are using.
Searching for ETV software, I only know that it existed, not found anywhere yet:
- Field service test diskette for ETV 250, 300, 350, it contains some intersting tools and format utility for 240/250/350.
- games diskette, including a good douzen of mbasic games like hangman.bas, subhunt.bas, etc.
Available documentation
- User manuals in german for all of the machines in my collection
- Service manual for ETV 250 and ETV 350
Missing machines in my collection: ETV 350, ETV 500 (same as M19 PC), ETS series - feel free to contact me if you like to get rid of these.
File conversion
crlf.com can convert ASCI to MWP and vice versa directly on the ETV 250/300/350 machine. You can use 22disk and PC-Alien on MS-DOS to read/write to ETV 240/250/300/350 disks. Please note that Olivetti M24 PC (AT&T 6300, Xerox 606x, Logabax P1600) is not compatible to 22disk, but PC-Alien works. You can use M19, M240 or any other PC for that software. ETV 260, 2700, 2900, 3000 and maybe 4000s (not tested yet. TA OPS 400 misses the conversion tool) can import MWP documents from ETV 240/250/350 diskettes inside the SWS/SWP application. If you are lucky, and you have ETV 260 or ETV 3000, you may get an external DU 260 drive for these to read ETV 300 5,25 disks from inside SWS (sectretary workspace, it's wordprocessor software) or using PC-Alien / 22disk on that machine. ETV 210s and CWP-1 can read/write documents from ETV 240/250/350 disks, but the documnets are not fully compatible as these two machines can support more text attributes with their dot matrix based printers.
Pictures
My ETV 300, with ET 121
Inside the ETV 300
ETV 300 testing with ET 225
Magic sticker!
ET 121 with ETS-kit, see the small extra keyboard on the right side!
My ETV 210s after fixing power supply
My ETV 250 (ETV 240 looks the same)
My CWP-1 (my ETV 250 and ETV 260 behind it)
I should crack Lotto jackpot soon...
Introduction
ETV and ETS are Olivetti's wordprocessing systems produced between 1980 and 1986 based on CP/M and up to 1992 with MS-DOS or even Win 3.0 as their operation system and they are quite special. The CP/M based ETV machines (and CWP-1) are based on Z80 processor (and their successors from Hitachi) and ETS are based on 8086/80186, so they run CP/M-86 (they are not compatible to MS-DOS!).
(Later ETV systems, based on i8088, NEC V40 and even i80286 are running MS-DOS: ETV 260, ETV 500, ETV 2700, ETV 2900, ETV 3000, ETV 4000s, VM 2000, Editor 100, Triumph Adler OPS 400 (same as ETV 4000s))
The CP/M based ETV machines have their own wordprocessing software called "Olitext-MWP" and they use internal daiswheel printer or external typewriter of the ET series as the printer (and keyboard). There were ROM-based machines, and a few which boots CP/M from diskette. The ROM based machines can not run other software as no command line is available. For ETS series I don't have much knowledge, I don't have one yet, they are even much more rare than ETV machines.
The CP/M system software delivered with the ETV machines which do boot from diskette is very basic, only pip and stat included on the disks. But I was able to locate some more tools for them, like a format tool for ethe ETV 300 (but not the others), mbasic, an MWP<->TXT converter and a few more. Generic CP/M standard tools from other CP/M 2.2 systems often didn't run on the ETV machines.
What is not known yet is what kind of terminal emulation these CP/M based systems use on the screen to configure 3rd party software like Wordstar to display correctly. It's not one of the standards like VT52/100. So the only game I got to run until now was ZORK 1-3 as this just uses CR/LF. But the ETV systems video system is able to do more, like cursor positioning, bold, italic inverse and highlight text attributes as can be seen inside MWP. (The DOS machines are just fine, they have CGA or VGA graphics)
The single sided floppy formats of all CP/M machines are well known by the standard tools like PC-Alien, Omnidisk, 22disk, etc. But there is exception, ETV210s and CWP-1 can alternatively use double sided format which is not yet defined in these tools. Olivetti did not provide disk format tools for the most of these machines to the customers, they prefered to sell preformatted disks to the clients. So the format tool for ETV 300 until now is a big exception. But if you want to format disks for the others, get a CWP-1, it can do within it's ROM based wordprocessor software. Or use some of the mentioned floppy tools for MS-DOS PC.
Overview of the CP/M based systems:
Integrated ETV systems
Computer, printer, keyboard all in one case, all of them have 3,5 inch drives, 360 or 720 kB.
Model overview:
- ETV 210s (ROM based, optionally one double side floppy, uses integrated thermo trasfer printer similar to IBM quietwriter) - this one is very rare
- ETV 240 (ROM based, none or one single side floppy, uses integrated ET 115 office typewriter daisywheel print mechanics)
- CWP-1 (ROM based, one double-side floppy, uses a 9 pin dot matrix printer with excellent quality)
- ETV 250 (one or two single side floppy, same look as ETV 240), boots CP/M from diskette, so it is the most interesting of the integrated systems as MWP can be exited to CP/M prompt, or if you delete MPW.COM from the disk, it directly boots into CP/M prompt.
ETV/ETS Extension boxes for ET series typewriters.
That means, to use these PC lookalike boxes you need an ET series office typewriter which has the optionally installed "ETV kit" or the different "ETS-kit". ETV-kit is for ETV. ETS-kit is for ETS, and they are incompatible to each other. The "ETV kit" consists of an serial interface (female plug) (which usually has it's own CPU) and some key caps to extend the keyboard of the ET series typewriters. The following machines could be extended with "ETV kit" or "ETS kit": ET 121, ET 225, ET 111, ET 112, ET 115, ET 116. (and all ET 2xxx for MS-DOS based ETV 2900 / VM 2900). The "ETS kit" contains a different serial interface (male plug) and an extra keyboard which is mounted at the right side of the ET keyboard. The typewriter acts like keyboard and printer to these ETV or ETS systems.
Please note, if you just have the ETV or ETS box, and you don't have the matching typewriter (and/or the separate ETS keyboard), you can't use it, as the serial protocol is not documented. You can't just buy "any" of the mentioned ET series typewriters, they usually don't have the optional ETV/ETS kit. If you see one which has the ETV/ETS kit, hurry up and grab it (regardless of the price...), they are really rare, you may see only one in 10 years in your country... Maybe italians are a bit more lucky... And you won't find a separate "ETV kit" or "ETS kit" anywhere to modify any ET series typewriter. The kits are individual to each model of ET series typewriter, that makes it even more difficult, and some are difficult to setup as you have to install addon bord to the baseboard of the typewriter, or you have to add EPROMs to the base board, etc. Only ET 112/116 would be easy, just plug it into the rear slot of the machine, that's it.
Besides the ETV kit there are also other LCU (lince communication unit) serial interfaces available to some of the ET series, the hardware is maybe the same, but different firmware, not compatible. And if you mix MWP language version with typewriter of other language that's also quite useless as you will type wrong characters and it will print wrong characters... So, to repeat it, if you have ETV 300/350 without the matching typewriter, and you see one in your country, hurry up and get it. How to remember an ET series with ETV kit? Some have a silver square sticker ontop, with the magic letters "ETV 300" or "ETV 350". They have cursor keys. They have serial interface at the rear.
So once you have the ET series typewriter with the matching ETV/ETS-kit, you can be quite happy. The best thing is to get them together...
One more thing: If the typewriter is broken, you can buy another of the same model and swap all things over to fix it. But take care on ET 121 and ET 225, you need to align the tabulation and daisywheel selector motor to the baseboard electronics, otherwise the machine won't work. This is a special task which needs knwoledge of the service manual of the machine. (ask me)
Models running Z80 CP/M
- ETV 300 (one or two 5,25 inch single sided floppy, capacity 170 kB)
- ETV 350 (one or two 3,5 inch singe sided floppy, capacity 360 kB
Both models were available as floppy bootable, and rarely ROM based, with an extra add on card.
Models running CP/M-86
- ETS 1010
- ETS 2010
The ETS nees typewriter with ETS-Kit, or they have their own keyboard, ... or .... even both! The ETS machines originally were designed by Syntrex Inc. Eatontown, New Jersey, USA. They could be connected to a central harddisk storage system of 10/20 MB which supported up to 8 or 16 ETS systems at the same time. They also could be used with a few Olivetti daiswheel or dot matrix printers of the PR- and DY-series.
(I don't have anything for ETS, as I don't have one yet. Only a very little number of systems survied, I only know about 2 owners world wide)
Monitors for the ETVs
As mentioned, I can't tell much about ETS, but don't expect standard signals and standard video frequencies. But ETV 240, 250 and 350 used the same compact 12" monitor which could be mounted comfortably on a an arm which was fixed to the table. The ETV 300 has a different monitor but as far as I remember, it also could be connected to ETV 350, so it should be compatible to 240/250 as well. I never tryed to swap them, but they all have the same DB9 connector which is also providing power to the monitor, try at your own risk and share your experience here. CWP-1 is using a completely different monitor having a 7 pin DIN connector, it looks similar to the CRT-2700 of ETV 2700 and Editor 100, but it's not the same. ETV 260 monitor looks the same as the 240/250/350 one, but it has light grey coloor and that one is CGA with strange (slower) frequency, so you can't use it. The CRT tubes in ETV 240/250 (and 260) are usually with green phosphor, but I once have seen white ones in ebay offers)
Available Software for ETV 250, 300, 350
MWP 2.0 for ETV 300 in german language. Works fine with ET 121. Has some dead keys (non alphanumeric ones) and some ASCII conversion problems with ET 225. (both are with 458 national german ROM)
MWP 3.0 for ETV 300 in italian language. Switches the typewriter to italian keyboard layout, needs also italian daiswheel (001 national language code) to print correct characters, works with both ET 121 and 225. But all is in italian.
MWP 3.0 for ETV 250 in german language. (Doesn't run nice on ETV 300)
sformat.com for ETV 300 can format it's diskette format
mbasic.com
crlf.com to convert files between ascii.txt to mwp file format, forth and back
some extra CP/M commands, but not many, like assembler, etc.
zork 1, zork 2, zork 3, this is generic version, not special for ETV systems
Much more software could be used, if we know what kind of terminal emulation these ETVs are using.
Searching for ETV software, I only know that it existed, not found anywhere yet:
- Field service test diskette for ETV 250, 300, 350, it contains some intersting tools and format utility for 240/250/350.
- games diskette, including a good douzen of mbasic games like hangman.bas, subhunt.bas, etc.
Available documentation
- User manuals in german for all of the machines in my collection
- Service manual for ETV 250 and ETV 350
Missing machines in my collection: ETV 350, ETV 500 (same as M19 PC), ETS series - feel free to contact me if you like to get rid of these.
File conversion
crlf.com can convert ASCI to MWP and vice versa directly on the ETV 250/300/350 machine. You can use 22disk and PC-Alien on MS-DOS to read/write to ETV 240/250/300/350 disks. Please note that Olivetti M24 PC (AT&T 6300, Xerox 606x, Logabax P1600) is not compatible to 22disk, but PC-Alien works. You can use M19, M240 or any other PC for that software. ETV 260, 2700, 2900, 3000 and maybe 4000s (not tested yet. TA OPS 400 misses the conversion tool) can import MWP documents from ETV 240/250/350 diskettes inside the SWS/SWP application. If you are lucky, and you have ETV 260 or ETV 3000, you may get an external DU 260 drive for these to read ETV 300 5,25 disks from inside SWS (sectretary workspace, it's wordprocessor software) or using PC-Alien / 22disk on that machine. ETV 210s and CWP-1 can read/write documents from ETV 240/250/350 disks, but the documnets are not fully compatible as these two machines can support more text attributes with their dot matrix based printers.
Pictures
My ETV 300, with ET 121
Inside the ETV 300
ETV 300 testing with ET 225
Magic sticker!
ET 121 with ETS-kit, see the small extra keyboard on the right side!
My ETV 210s after fixing power supply
My ETV 250 (ETV 240 looks the same)
My CWP-1 (my ETV 250 and ETV 260 behind it)
I should crack Lotto jackpot soon...
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