Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
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Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#2I remember Olivetti PCs from the late 80s to 90s. They were beautifully designed -- not SGI or Sun beautiful -- but beautiful for PCs. I like the "grate" design.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/325569104545
The IBM PS/2 Model 30 was also quite beautiful
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/56...
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#3the thing i like most about these is that, though normally they're executing their machine code from the keyboard like a normal calculator, the 'v', 'w', 'y', and 'z' keys jump to user-defined machine code addresses and start executing code from memory. i think that's an inspiring way to provide an application with programmable function keys on a really extremely limited computer, far too small for even forth
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#4I remember Olivetti PCs from the late 80s to 90s. They were beautifully designed -- not SGI or Sun beautiful -- but beautiful for PCs. I like the "grate" design. https://www.ebay.com/itm/325569104545 The IBM PS/2 Model 30 was also quite beautiful https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/56...
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#5I remember Olivetti PCs from the late 80s to 90s. They were beautifully designed -- not SGI or Sun beautiful -- but beautiful for PCs. I like the "grate" design. https://www.ebay.com/itm/325569104545 The IBM PS/2 Model 30 was also quite beautiful https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/56...
I worked at Olivetti's Advanced Technology Labs in Cupertino until 1989. We were really making some wonderful stuff then, but the company itself was having trouble, and some scandals. The executive staff were always being arrested for one thing or another (see https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/03/world/accused-olivetti-ch... for example).
We paid more attention to cases, fasteners, and design than most other clone vendors.
I left out of frustration and joined a little company that put a stack-based programming language inside laser printers.
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#6I remember Olivetti PCs from the late 80s to 90s. They were beautifully designed -- not SGI or Sun beautiful -- but beautiful for PCs. I like the "grate" design. https://www.ebay.com/itm/325569104545 The IBM PS/2 Model 30 was also quite beautiful https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/56...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/166770231506?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...
My favorite comes from before the PC era:
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#7Looking at eBay, 20.000 EUR
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#8Looking at eBay, 20.000 EUR
That's only $2000 adjusted for inflation (from 1965)
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#9Back in the 80s, having their typewriters allowing you to delete the last 4 characters was cutting-edge material. Then a tiny screen was a 'wow moment'.
Re: Olivetti Programma 101: At the Origins of the Personal Computer
#10Silicon Valley might have started in Italy with Olivetti, but political issues and unfortunate events stopped it from happening. There's a great podcast about it (Italian): https://podcast.ilsole24ore.com/serie/olivetti-occasione-per...