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Who made the Olivetti BIOS?

6885P5H

Experienced Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2015
Messages
320
Location
Québec, Canada
Hi. I'm just wondering who made the Olivetti BIOS. I think their first computer to feature it was their first IBM PC-compatible, the M24 right? One day I saw a very weird and rare "Intel" computer on eBay that had a BIOS from Phoenix Technologies. To my surprise the POST screen was basically the same thing as on an Olivetti PC. However, they say that Phoenix came up with their BIOS in 1984. Was this before or after the M24 was released? It surprises me that the release year for such a well-known computer isn't even known, some say it was released in 1983 while others say it was released in '84.

Well what do you guys think? It seems obvious when comparing the POST screens that they come from the same codebase, and it's impossible that Phoenix got the code from Olivetti, so it has to be the other way.

Here's the POST screen of an Olivetti M380 XP4. this is what you see on almost all Olivetti PCs from 1983 (if the M24 is indeed from '83) to 1993.
https://i.ibb.co/4Vrsz3S/post.jpg

Here's the POST screen of the Phoenix Technologies BIOS of the Intel computer.
https://i.ibb.co/YDXc2vy/phoenix-technologies-post.jpg


By the way what happened to this forum? My profile picture is gone, private messages are bugged and find all started topics does not show who posted the last message.
 
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