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How to bring back to life a 1983 Olivetti M24?

G

'Georgy Papantoniou'

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2012
Messages
59
Location
Nicosia, Cyprus, Cyprus
I had formatted in 2000 my grandad's Olivetti M24, since FORMAT was the only command I knew then!... Since then, the only thing the PC does is to show "Rom basic not available". I am no computer master, but I believe IBM DOS 3.30 would be a great way to bring this old PC back to life. The computer only has a 5.25 disk drive. Do you think that this software pack I found on ebay will be able to be installed to this computer? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MICROSOFT-IBM-DOS-3-3-30-w-5-25-3-5-Floppies-Manuals-1987-O-S-80X0939-/170933622874?ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:GB:1123

Can you tell me any other ways to make this great ol' PC going? Any other Operating systems that may be supported by the computer?
It has 20MB Hard drive, 512kb ram, and 360kb 5.25 floppy disk.
 
Geia soy, Georgi,

Ti kannis?

Yes, that should work as will nearly any other DOS version you may have e.g., MS 3.3, 4.x, 5.x, or 6.x. As long as you can get it on 360K disks it will work.
 
With 512 KB ram DOS 3.30 should be perfect for it. You also can find a cheap ISA network adapter if you wish and drop into IRC sometime on it with mTCP, I've done it before although the hard drive in mine still isn't bootable (not an original drive, SCSI).
 
I checked again and I have 640kB of RAM! I also got an Intel i8086 processor.

Two things are bothering me about a purchase of IBM DOS 3.3 from ebay:

1. The disks must be 100% readable. If they were packed in the box since 1987, I guess they have survived, but even a bad sector on the floppy disk will fail the installation.
2. The hard drive is blank. The only data that exists on the PC is the BIOS, I am not sure if it will be able to initialise an installation from the floppy drive.


What do you think is the chance that the installation will succeed?
 
Your chances are actually pretty good. PC-DOS should run fine on your M24 as the interfaces, at least from a software standpoint, are IBM PC-compatible. 5.25" disks from 1987 should be quite readable (floppies are a lot tougher than most people think). About all that I would do is blow the dust out of the floppy drives before attempting installation.
 
Do you have a way to create a DOS disk from an image file? IOW, do you have a modern computer that can write to a 5.25" floppy?
 
My experience with 5 1/4" floppy diskettes from the eighties are very good. I have recently been imaging all of my old floppies, plus all I could find elsewhere. They all work, except two that seem to have been exposed to a magnetic field or something - they appear to contain no data whatsoever (they were factory floppies and should have content).

Stay away from 1.44MB (aka 2.0MB) 3.5" floppies though, unless they were written yesterday there'll probably be read errors.. factory written floppies are slightly better. All my own floppies are unreadable.

I have fond memories of the 8086-based M24 btw. I had access to one at work and it was a nice machine to program on. Much better and faster than the ordinary 8088 machines.

-Tor
 
My experience with 5.25" floppies tells me that if they've been stored properly, recovery of data more than 30 years old is a near-certainty. With 8" floppies, reading nearly 40-year old data isn't uncommon.

About the only issue that I've really found is that older drives tended to drift out of alignment more readily. So recovery sometimes entails "mis-aligning" the drive that's doing the reading.
 
I am between two products to buy for the Olivetti restoration. IBM DOS 3.3 http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-PC-DOS-Disk-Operating-System-3-3-3-30-rare-5-25-diskettes-/281028697176?pt=US_Operating_Systems_Software&hash=item416e9d9c58 and MS DOS 3.3 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-MS-DOS-3-3-3-30-OEM-rare-two-5-25-diskettes-/281030320090?pt=US_Operating_Systems_Software&hash=item416eb65fda

Both software disks are sold by the same seller
MS DOS 3.3 is in good condition, only the 5.25 floppies are included, Price 15$
IBM DOS 3.3 is in perfect condition, manuals, box, and everything is included, Price 30$.

What should I choose? Which of the two are more compatible with 1980s video games and software? Thanks
 
MS DOS.
They're basically the same thing but generally you'd only find PC-DOS on IBM machines, so MS DOS would be more authentic, and also apparently cheaper.

You can also create the install disks if you have a 5.25 drive in another machine - I usually do this and just buy the original DOS as a collectors piece rather than risking the original disks in a 25+ year old drive. This is also important because unless the seller has tested the disks, there is a chance they will fail.
 
When the seller says this:

‘Due to the nature of magnetic media I can't guarantee their readability upon arrival.’

you have to be careful because you might get a disk that's unuseable. Since you want something that will make the computer run I'm not sure this deal is what you should be looking at. You need a set of disks that are known to work. Like Spider said above, ‘You can also create the install disks if you have a 5.25 drive in another machine’.
 
I am not a computer pro, just a computer enthusiast. It would be very expensive and difficult to me to attach a 5.25 floppy drive to any of my computers...

What is the probability that the 5.25 disks will not work? The seller told me that they have been stored in a dark place with no magnetic fields, in their own box
 
It depends on what computers you have. If you have one with a 3.5" floppy is should be easy. But if none of your other computers have a floppy drive it's not as easy.

As far as the disks working or not... some disks just don't age well and as they get older the surface coating breaks down and rubs off on the heads and they become unuseable. but, for the most part, older disks seem to work ok. Or, if you know anybody closeby who has any DOS disks you could try them and make a copy.
 
I made the decision to buy both software. In case one is faulty, the other might probably work...

When, and if the the installation succeeds, do you suggest me anything worthwhile to install or do on that PC that would work in a green monochrome display? Like a 1980s video game for DOS?

Can I install Windows 1.0 in a monochrome display? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgClf_X0ykg Here is a video I took in the past of the Olivetti M24
 
The Olivetti M24 is the same machine marketed here in the US by AT&T as the PC6300. Although you have a monochrome display, it's more similar to a CGA than an IBM MDA/MGA and has a high-resolution 640x400 graphics mode not available in the PC. So, yes, it will run Windows 1.0--and may well have drivers specifically for the PC6300 (much Microsoft software did).
 
The computer currently does not respond, giving the error "Rom basic not available". I cannot enter any commands in it, and that is what concerns me the most.

When I enter the MS DOS installation floppy in the drive, will the installation commence automatically?
 
It should be able to read it and boot from it but I don't think it will install automatically.

Put a disk, any disk, in the floppy drive and start the machine. If it's working properly you should see the message...

‘Non-System disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready’

If not, there might be a problem.
 
If it's saying ROM BASIC NOT FOUND then it's probably trying to boot from the blank hard drive, resulting in that error. If the drive was completely unpartitioned and no floppy in the drive it should say "Primary Boot-Strap Error", or at least my PC-6300s (M24s) do.

Another thing is if there's a floppy in the drive upon startup when it does the system check it should say "Drive A: Not Ready" or "Drive A: Ready" or something similar, ready meaning there's a disk in the drive, bootable or not.
 
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