0093 Two international wedge computers from 1987

[@ukaszSkowerski]

"I'm really not into collectibles" says the man hoarding computers and fixing them 😅

[@rommix0]

Wellllll. At least he ain't Clint. I still feel bad for what happened to his collection after the hurricane.

[@TheGreatAtario]

Computers are not (just) collectibles!

[@douro20]

@@ukaszSkowerski I'm not much of a collector, either, mainly because I don't have the space. I also want all of the electronics/ mechanics I collect to be functional.

[@ukaszSkowerski]

@@douro20 as we all do :)

[@bentboybbz]

​@@rommix0 For sure, absolutely a sad series of events, even beyond him losing his collection, most of the things in his collection are not made anymore for many years, some things that were probably rare or one of one many years ago when made to begin with, his collection was fairly large as well, so it's not just one less for others to collect but many thousands more than likely, a sad time for him and the community as well, although I am, and I'm sure everyone else is thankful he is ok, I'm fairly sure he is from my area too, which for some reason makes it a little closer to home in some odd way that really makes no sense to me, humans are so complicated and strange, I appreciate your time and effort! I hope everyone is having a great day or night?

[@peterhanraets]

Hi Adrian, hope you will soon be able to enjoy the FS-A1F. Some notes, apparently the capacitor situation got mixed up in my communication with Shahram, one of my friends noted that the missing color is due to not all the pins on the CXA chip being soldered to the HIC1 board. For the Gotek adapter, please make sure to connect the 26 pin ribbon cable correctly, it carries also 12V and connecting it up the wrong way might fry the Gotek and/or the mainboard, with the machine powered on you can probe where the 12V is and on the adapter board it will be on the BERG connector from the 26 pin. The upgraded ROM will remove the onboard applications, you can keep the original ROM but it can interfere with Nextor (MSX-DOS). Generally 128kB RAM (after the upgrade) is enough for playing games and running applications. Most games can be played with the keyboard. Use the cursors for directions, space for main trigger and M for secondary trigger. Some games will use Z, X, C for commands (like on PC-8801/PC-9801). MSX joysticks/joypads need 2 trigger buttons to be usable in games.

[@sys3655]

Wish the 26pin floppy adapter for A1-F was open source. Currently the only way to get one I guess to to track down the years old post about it and "message him" to send him money for one or something.

[@SlavicCelery]

My opinion (not that it matters), open the car box. And then push the car around your desk making engine noises. Tire squeal noises are optional, but encouraged.

[@joeconti2396]

I don't know why but I'm so so happy Adrian is an F1 fan.

[@KarlDavies-dn3eg]

I smiled too when he mentioned that he watched it all including sprints and practices etc. My wife thinks I'm the only person to do so lol

[@starsundsternchen802]

Me too!

[@MarianoLu]

@@KarlDavies-dn3eghey one more here, I also watch all, including free practices. Looks like we are not alone 😂

[@burnrubber7547]

And me : ) followed since the nigel Mansel era. V10s and Schumacher are my favourite times.

[@glenn9854]

We had an Olivetti typewriter in the office I used to work for. It was used constantly for almost 25 years. It was truly beautiful to look at as well as being a real "workhorse"

[@MrAlan1828]

North York or we should say its from Toronto, Ontario :) There is a Multicart for the MSX series of computers that does almost everything except upgrade to MSX2+ this is called the Carnivore and can use CF cards, use real 1.44mb floppies, memory mapper, sound etc . Its so cool how the retro community is give people this great experience other than emulation

[@SH-R.DateCure-Shiori]

Hi from Japan! Happy to see MSX in your video! Many MSXes used to have 2 cartridge slots, and they can be used in various way just like C64 as all address/data buses were exposed to the slot, like simple RAM expansion, non-application ROM(mostly fonts), sound module like SCC from KONAMI/FM-PAC FM/NVRAM combo from Panasonic, modem/RS-232C, external floppy drive....there were so many kinds of cartridges and modern homebrew projects are still active today. Also, some games goes special mode when another specific game cart is inserted in 2nd slot.

[@PaulinesPastimes]

How nice is the Panasonic. The GUI is lovely. Looking forward to seeing the Olivetti too.

[@gabrielebiffi9018]

Adrian checking out an Olivetti PC1 and having some classic Italian candies is like a dream come true! My father used to work at Olivetti in the late 80s and brought home a PCS 286, that's what started my passion for computers, and now there's one always sitting on my desk. Can't wait for the full video... but I didn't expect you to kill it first :D

[@davidebucci8171]

As an Olivetti M20 and M200 fan, I’m happy to see an Olivetti computer on your bench!

[@computer_toucher]

Our first PC was an Olivetti, from the death knells era. PCS 44/C 486 SX/25 with the Sound Blaster 16 and 2x CD-ROM entertainment pack preinstalled, so a lot of Grolier and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Upgraded with an AWE32, DX2/50 overdrive, and 8 MB RAM. It's where I learned about the demoscene, 3D Studio, and made tracker music. The motherboard had decent specs, I remember - Tseng ET4000 onboard, but only 512 KB RAM so a bit hampered for higher resolutions. But 3D Studio 3 had drivers for it :)

[@benotsilent6703]

heyo from Texas back at ya.

[@TiBosRetroComputers]

FINALLY An Olivetti has arrived at your basement. As a collector of Olivetti computers myself the Olivetti Prodest PC1 is not yet in my collection #Olivetti

[@angelocosta3776]

Oh my god! I still have today a olivetti pc1 dual diskette drives. My very first computer in 1992. Still working today!

[@LarixusSnydes]

What I really love about Olivetti is the design of their keyboards and calculators (I own two programmable Olivetti scientific calculators from the 80's). The colour coding of the function groups is well chosen, with good contrast and well legible fonts 😀.

[@playingwithdata]

I love the aesthetics of many of the Japanese 80s home computers -- often a little busy but so purposeful and techy. The orange on black of that MSX is lovely.

[@SierraWhiskeyHotelRadio]

Oh man! An Olivetti and an MSX2 in the same mail call video! I love my Sony HB-F1XDJ MSX2+ machine. There aren't many MSX2 users in Portland but maybe we can change that! I made up an RGB cable for mine and highly recommend it. (Or S-Video) It makes a huge difference especially in text mode. MSX-DOS is binary compatible with CP/M so you can try running some CP/M software off of the GoTek as well! I can't wait to see the main channel video!

[@peterhanraets]

The Panasonic FS-A1F has the same 8 pin DIN connector for RGB as the Sony HB-F1XDJ. BTW the other 8 pin DIN is for a cassette interface.

[@anvz6]

CP/M will need the ram to be upgraded to at least 128kb

[@SierraWhiskeyHotelRadio]

@@anvz6 ​​⁠the MSX Pico provides additional RAM through a mapper so CP/M should have ample memory but getting to 128k on-board is as simple as adding a few more chips to the board. Rammy (and by extension, Adrian) have plenty of RAM chips to spare!

[@BrunoFonsecaPT]

The Olivetti PC1 was my first PC… love that machine! Yeah, it didn’t stand a chance against the Amiga, but at the time I didn’t know (took me a few years until I saw an Amiga), so I enjoyed gaming in it as if it was the best thing in the world. Really looking forward to watch your next video. There’s not enough content on KZbin about this little machine…

[@douro20]

Yes, the MSX-Pico emulates all of the sound addons made for the MSX (Dual PSG, FM-PAC and Konami SCC).

[@joysticksnjukeboxes]

I just happened to see a video on KZbin the other day with someone exploring an abandoned Olivetti factory in Italy and giving a bit of a history lesson.

[@manoliskypraios8153]

Hi Adrian, I am looking forward to see the Olivetti Prodest up and running as I used to have one back in the day! I was doing a lot of work on it with Wordstar, Lotus 123 and DBase III Plus. I had the 2 floppy Version with MSDOS 3.2. Played some CGA Games and many Point and click Adventure games Like Kings Quest, Monkey Island etc... By the way the second Floppy Slot could be populated with a Hard Disk which I could not afford at the time :) The good old days :):)

[@andersmmvfc.8376]

So happy your enjoy f1 just like I do, my dad watched f1 on Anderstorp here in sweden in the 1976, they rolled out one car with 6 weels, great content as always!!

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

Yeah I've been into watching it for about 20 years now and it's amazing to see the pinnacle of motorsports racing. It's at least getting more popular in the US (with 3 races per season happening here now) so that's nice at least!

[@andersmmvfc.8376]

@adriansdigitalbasement2 I think the most important thing is that you get a decent driver a couple of years with a good personality, it is great with iconic racetracks like the one in Texas but a driver can rally the hole country for decades. Looking forward to the Panasonic computer on your main channel!

[@tstahlfsu]

4:26 Who else misses the candy reviews???

[@matthiasgalus4287]

They both look amazing the design of the time is so cool. I never had an MSX Computer they where not very commen here in Germany but I always admired there design in the shop windows

[@greenmoose_]

I love these unboxing videos and am quite excited to see the main channel videos on both of these computers!!

[@GiammarcoZacheo]

I'm glad you loved Galatine - the only downside is that they're addictive 😁

[@rigues]

Great to see an MSX! I have the predecessor of your machine (FS-A1), it is a great, reliable little computer.

[@rigues]

Replying to myself: the DIN connectors are a cassete port and an analog RGB out (15 kHz). The RGB port follows the standard MSX Pinout, which you can easily find in the MSX Wiki. The batteries are for the real-time clock. I hope that the HIC1 board wasn't badly damaged by the caps, they can have some NASTY results. In the worst case scenario, I believe there is a clone board available. You can use Sega Genesis Gamepads on it, provided you build a little adapter called JoyMega, by FRS. It just reroutes some pins and uses a TTL chip to invert a signal. With it, you can even use all six buttons on compatible games.

[@emdxemdx]

Olivetti has been an icon of industrial design since the end of the war. Their office products look years ahead of when they were manufactured…

[@cencio_1976]

If you Google "Olivetti showroom" and look at the images, it's like looking at today's Apple stores, but in black and white.

[@arkanoid1980]

Grande Olivetti! P.s. michele reads mick (with hard C or K) + ele like electric. Your pronunciation of Galatine is correct. Goleador are unrelated to football actually from what I know, just a name (Goleador is a player who sets a lot of goals)

[@simonsunnyboy]

Great video as always. I'd rather prefer seeing repairs of the machines shown here than more C64s or Apples on the main channel. Mainly you already have a lot of those types of videos but few MSX or rare XT clones in comparison.

[@SimonGreener]

Excellent SMMC with the MSX, and now looking forward to the main channel detailed video on the MSX!

[@yuridh]

Hi Adrian, love your video's. Brings back memories from the 80s and 90s when I fixed those computers and AV equipment. By the way, on the MSX2 computer. The connector between the printer- and the RGB connector is probably an tape recorder connector.

[@thegez73]

The "Olivetti Prodest PC1" was my first PC, it may have been a very successful machine if only Olivetti had been more courageous and had created a more modern machine ... insted they create an already obsolete machine (XT class with CGA graphics) because the case design is, as usual for Olivetti, awesome. In my opinion was a missed opportunity. At the time Olivetti owned Acorn computers, thus also his "Advanced RISC Machines" (ARM) division, so they might have imported in Italy the Archimedes that may have been a valid Amiga / Atari ST competitor ... and insted they decided to create this one, missed opportunity number two. P.S. Adrian, I really envy those t-shirts!

[@starsundsternchen802]

I'm really eager to see a video about the KC85 coming soon!

[@Davide0033]

as an italian, Olivetti was much more than a computer company. the typewriter era olivetti defined an era and a colture, a coulture that is still being looked at, that was sadly sabotages by other, less inclined north italian companies (and possibly some us companies as well, but that's speculation). i'm always happy to hear the Olivetti brand. also, first time i've seen anyone who actually liked the milk candies

[@ivanuoc]

I love the MSX! It was very popular in Spain where it competed with the other 3 major 8-bit computers here (ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64). It was truly a standard and was supported by big household appliance brands (Sony, Philips, Panasonic, Sanyo,...). In fact it was the only Japanese home computer that made it to the West (other Japanese computers which were successful in Japan were never sold outside the land of the rising sun: PC-88/98, FM-Towns, X68000,...). Although MSX was popular in many regions/countries worldwide (Europe, South America, Middle East, Japan, Korea, Russia,...) it is almost unknown in the US

[@alexhofstee466]

Same here. I grew up with the MSX over here in the Netherlands. There doesn't seem to be much love for the MSX with KZbinrs and they don't get a lot of attention. But I have many fond memories of playing games on my MSX systems. There are a lot of fun games and the hardware seems quite reliable still. My Toshiba HX-10 still works just fine.

[@mikes989]

The first microcomputers that arrived in my country in quantity, in the first half of the 80s, were NEC series pc8100 and then pc9800. We loved the high res text and grapics. Algo most of the displays were japanese too

[@mikes989]

Maybe next weeK I ll be buying a Phiilips MSX2

[@Moremjd]

@@alexhofstee466 They were big in Latin America too, all those local brands popping up out of nowhere making MSX machines at really affordable prices(some even with CP/M)

[@rrpiva]

Loved to see a MSX... It was quite popular in Brazil. Try playing King's Valley. Love that game. Regards from your fan in Curitiba, 🇧🇷! 😊

[@imqqmi]

Looking forwards seeing that msx2 computer restored! And how the pi Pico cartridge performs!

[@MaggieKeizai]

Oh hey, I have that same MSX2 machine. One of the cool things about that particular model is that you can upgrade it to MSX2+ specs, which is why I opted to get that particular machine. So now we know that there are at least 2 of these in the same metro area!

[@TBMartin]

I did not know you are a F1 fan. That's cool. Been a fan myself for 40 years now

[@MrKurtHaeusler]

That Olivetti reminds me of the Amstrad PC20 and the Sinclair PC200 (which had a cool looking black design) that came out way too late and tried to compete with the Amiga 500 and Atari ST. A friend had the Amstrad PC20, it had GEM for a desktop environment but yeah was underpowered and only ran cga games. I think it was a good couple of hundred bucks cheaper than the Amiga 500 .

[@Dawwwg]

There so many cute and interesting MSX models, from tiny candy colored 16KB MSX 1 to professional grade MSX2 with digitizers, 2+ and of course the TurboR. Including tons of interesting audio chips and hw expansion. I loved programming for them.

[@networkg]

If you enjoy the MSX games, you can play them on your Nabu computer with some conversion. On the Nabu server, there is a library of available MSX titles.

[@bobvines00]

Adrian, the next time you need to boost your (U.S) voltage to 220-240, etc., use your Variac to lower your 122 VAC to whatever is needed to get voltages you want like the 220 VAC needed by the Olivetti.

[@reefabus]

The BMW M12 motor in the Brabham BT55 was pushing almost 1500hp in quali trim. Four cylinder turbo monster.

[@johnwells558]

Love the range of MSX computers, havent got one my self, looking forward to see you fixing it.

[@anvz6]

MSX standard allowed up to 4 slots and up to 4 subslots on each one. Slots just covers the 64 kb of address space of the z80 and divided in 4 banks of 16kb. The address space of 64 can be mapped with any combination of banks from the 16 possible slots. System rom and system ram are located on slots also. At least one slot is external via connector but in general there were 2 for leaving 1 for external disk drive and other for ROM software (game, language program, text editor, etc). In msx2 a memory mapper was added. This way only one slot can map an switch up to 64kb taken from a total of 1024kb max. Physical slot connectors has access to IO space and cartridges not only includes software but also hardware like sound generators, or any other devices. I'm 90's I made an EPROM programmer. If you wanted you could add a commodore SID chip there (the slot has an audio input for injecting sound that will be mixed with computer audio) In this old times, msx was like now PC compatible and commodore like apple.

[@kvahlman]

Can't wait for the Olivetti video, the brand has a special place in my heart as my first PC was an Olivetti PCS 33 which had the weirdest power button I've ever seen. So hoping to see some wonky design decisions in a deeper dive to that machine. The strong brand design is clearly visible already in that case.

[@dan_loup]

The two slots are for well anything you want. the MSX just have some pretty nifty memory "slots" to deal with expansions both internal and external, so you could for example add a disk drive to the system if didn't had one, could add a FM music cart, add more memory, there's even some wild bizarre cartridges that turn your MSX 1 into an MSX 2

[@RommudohDev]

At least in Germany, we had 220V until 1987. It got adjusted in steps to 230V. Since 2009 we have 230V +/- 10% at 50Hz, like most of the rest of Europe. So, all devices intended for use here have to be rated 230V, and should be able to handle up to 253V.

[@NYYR1KK1]

... oh and that hole on the MSX cartridge... It was meant so that the computer can prevent accidental insertion or removal of cartridge while power is on... (Not that I would have seen it implemented on any of my machines ever.) The other hole in bottom is to prevent that you can't insert the card wrong way around.

[@simmo1024]

Used work in a place where we created blueprints. Basically we would draw the part on a translucent kind of grease-proof paper in ink, and then you would take this down to the basement where you would lay it over a light sensitive paper and expose it to a bright light for a bit. Where the lines weren't the light sensitive paper would turn pale blue, and the lines dark blue. The slight fuzziness of the lines is caused by the bleeding of light onto the lines. Ultimately not something you wanted to leave in the sunlight, however the original drawings were kept and further blueprints from them could always be made.

[@Thesecret101-te1lm]

Cool machines! Some suggestions: A: Recap rather than replace the Olivetti PSU. It looks like a typical L296 secondary switch regulator setup, like the C128 and the first Amiga 500 PSUs, and those are afaik really solid as long as the few caps are in good shape. Maybe just to be sure check that there is a crow bar circuit in the Olivetti though. You could of course replace the built in transformer with say a separate transformer from some old ink jet printer or old scanner or other thrift store style power supply if you want to power it from your 120V sockets. B: Use the 120->100V transformer before your 120->240V step up transformer in order to get approx 220V instead of 240V for any 220V European equipment. C: Like others have already suggested, install a 240V socket in your lab. You could be the first vintage computing KZbinr in North America to do this! Either use US style NEMA-6 or NEMA-14 connectors, or some European socket. The NEMA 6/14 option would probably be the best as it would be compliant with the NEC (US electrical code). Then just have a power strip or two with Schuko and perhaps UK sockets, and put the apropriate NEMA plugs on it. Edit: To make it as safe as possible for usage with european equipment, you could add an additional breaker box in series, so your panel would have standard US breakers, while an extra box with a DIN rail could have breakers that are both UL rated and comply with the characteristics for European electric installations (trip speed at various levels of over current and whatnot). Such boxes and breakers can be bought from solar companies as solar panel combiner/breaker boxes - for some reason the solar breakers for DC seems to always use DIN rail, and I doubt that they aren't approved for AC too.

[@Arivia1]

He wouldn’t be the first, clabretro already has a 240v line for his retro rack.

[@Thesecret101-te1lm]

@@Arivia1 True! But afail Clab only uses it to power equipment that consumes lots of power, not for imported equipment. (Also more or less everything Clab uses is new enough that I think it will run on anything between 100-240V). :)

[@NYYR1KK1]

Today it may seem a bit weird that many MSX computers had more than one expansion slot as we have today all these "all in one" cards and this model has even internal disk drive, but back in time it was common that you had ie. SCSI or IDE in one slot, music expansion in another, then maybe RS-232, MIDI, RAM expansion or another sound card on third slot and so on... and if you wanted to play a cartridge game it many times meant you needed to first disconnect something, if you didn't have a free slot. Even the card you have divides the slot logically to 4 slots to fit all the functionality in... So practically all the reasons were same as with some PC:s that had more than one ISA-slot although i.e. external video cards were never really popular on MSX. Anyway the standard allows you to i.e. plug up to 4 disk controllers with up to 8 drives to the system at a same time. The little difference is that slots on MSX are numbered, so you don't need to play with dip switches as is the case with PCs.

[@spewp]

Your fondness for Formula 1 is a pleasant surprise. When Adrian's Gearhead Basement Channel? :D

[@nicholas4839]

Loved the video

[@rager1969]

Adrian, can you share a list of the caps you are ordering? It would be helpful to know what a good mix of caps to have on hand. Thanks.

[@lasskinn474]

the hole is necessary for some msx machines, it's for locking the cart in while powered on or for cutting the power if you remove it while powered up

[@peterhanraets]

Yeah the hole is indeed part of the MSX specification. but not many computers had an actual pin locking the cartridge. There are 2 pins on the cartridge slot that need to be shorted and together with a switch in the cartridge slot can turn off the machine during insertion or removal of the cartridge. This is used on more machines but the Panasonic FS-A1F has neither ;)

[@FabioJulioRoque]

Here in Brazil Ollivetti is main known as typewriters (mechanical and electrical). Everyone that worked at office have one.Nice to hear that in sometimes produced computer!

[@dakinlowe36]

Olivetti branded systems were also sold in Australia. Aunty had one in the 90s. It wasn't cheap if I recall correctly.

[@TalesofWeirdStuff]

Is the mouse for that the same as the mouse for the M24 / AT&T PC6300?

[@TheMM360]

Watch out, those Galatine cause addiction.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

Yeah -- they are gone, that was the first package of candy to be eaten entirely. :-)

[@EgoShredder]

@@adriansdigitalbasement2 I swear I heard you shout, "Buonissimo!"

[@OscarSommerbo]

Olivetti REALLY tried in Europe to compete, but they were always a year or two behind, and they were kind expensive for what you got. And Northern Europe were early adopters of Sinclair and Commodore, so Olivetti never made much of a dent in the home computer market, I do think they had some success in the word processing space until PC clones rolled in and crushed them.

[@MrKanjidude]

I love the chunky, techy 80s aesthetic of that MSX. Goes right in line with my nostalgia for blocky squarebody pickup trucks and G1 Transformers. ✌️

[@mogwaay]

Love to see more of the Olivetti PC1

[@lathans1]

The PAUSE button might be accessed by pressing Ctrl+SCROLL LOCK (it says BREAK on it), or perhaps with Ctrl+NUM LOCK.

[@douro20]

The Yamaha V6355D video controller can control either an LCD or a CRT.

[@BollingHolt]

I am being donated an Olivetti TES 501. From 1976, I believe, it is a word processor utilizing 8" floppy disks and is built into a free-standing piece of furniture.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

And I bet the word processor and the furniture was extremely stylish and awesome looking!

[@BollingHolt]

@@adriansdigitalbasement2 It's neat! It's still at the church, along with a whole bunch of stuff I'm supposed to get, and when I get it moved to Montgomery, I'll do a video on it. It powers up and appears to work, but I don't know how to work it LOL.

[@RommudohDev]

37:31 the connector between printer and RGB is labelled kasetto in katakana, so it's most likely for a cassette drive

[@anotheruser9876]

You must have enjoyed Max's drive in the wet in Brazil last weekend. It was great to see the Alpine drivers on the podium as well.

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

Yep. You nailed the pronunciation for Galatine. They are kind of an acquired taste though. 😀 I don't think I have seen anything similar around the world. Also, the Function keys on the Olivetti came in that shadow of yellow from the factory.

[@rivimey]

shadow => shade 'shadow' what you get when something blocks the light; A 'shade' (of a colour) is a small variation in it, such as light green to olive green. It doesn't necessarily mean darker. [to be confusing You can be 'in the shade', meaning you are within a shadow cast by something else]

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

⁠indeed. I had the feeling that something was off when I wrote the comment. On the other hand, English is only the third language I learned, so I'm sure there is still room for improvement.

[@williamgreen5575]

To solve the screwdriver bit problem you can with the MSX, cut a slot in the back of the screwdriver bit, you can then use a normal screwdriver to turn the bit in a deep narrow hole.

[@lbanting]

A school I went to used to have Olivetti (mostly) and a couple of AT&T (re-badges Olivetti's)

[@pauloalmeida8644]

The PC1 was my first computer

[@UnbornApple]

I’d love to see Adrian get into Japanese PCs. There’s a lot of dead X68000s out there that need repairs!

[@resh7391]

Olivetti is an iconic brand in Italy and it's history is so interesting that some tv series were made (the history of the programma 101, or the way Adriano Olivetti brought the company in the modern era) … but unfortunately it really fell down hard and now there's a huge Olivetti factory that lies completely abandoned as a testimony of what once was a serious competitor for IBM or Apple that nobody remembers.

[@enes_karaca]

Oh, olivetti. A lot of the dot matrix printers used in retail and accounting (invoices and stuff) were olivetti ones here up until mid 2000s.

[@mikes989]

in our schools from the second hald of the 80s to laste 90s we had lots of MSX. mainly Hitachi, Daewoo, Casio, Toshiba and Panasonic. the most common were the Panasonic CF-2700 I believe

[@helmargesel3972]

Thanks for the information

[@james_lockman]

Our computer in middle school (1980) was an Olivetti programmable calculator. It had a big magnetic sheet (the size of a punch card) on which it stored programs. We had one game: Nim.

[@der.Schtefan]

Well, if you don't keep up with the Commodore, the Commodore is DEFINITELY going to keep up with you.

[@KarlDavies-dn3eg]

I'm looking forward to the videos featuring this msx and it's Pico board. Something new for us to sink out proverbial teeth into.

[@rzerobzero]

Recently I saw myself squinting on a zoom call and I realized it was time to get my eyes checked. What a world of difference! It's with nothing but love and respect that I suggest you do the same.

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

Oh I see the eye doctor every year -- my issue is shooting video my top down camera is large and in front of my face, so I have to sit pretty far back from the monitor which makes it harder to read fine text.

[@retrozmachine1189]

Olivetti sold PCs in Australia too. I can't remember the model but one of them with a 1.44" floppy drive was able to format DD discs as HD (1.44).

[@metmanik]

22:00 big agree on hating useless ai features

[@nigefoxx]

I've heard that pop-pop-pop you had when undoing the screws on the Panasonic. Time to get yourself some JIS screwdrivers!

[@Synthematix]

Olivetti were used for television on screen titling of sports events

[@poofygoof]

with the amount of 240V equipment you have, you could put in a 240V receptacle at your bench.

[@akkudakkupl]

Carts in MSX were basically on separate IO addresses so you could use them to expand the hardware.

[@KrzysztofC-1]

that scratching noise could simply be loose connection under that electrical tape, it was probably twisted and taped and oxidized.

[@enginerd80]

Yeah, I was going to say the same; it sounded just like electrical arcing. I don't know if at 120 V it sounds different and that's why Adrian didn't recognize it (or if he's never made sketchy connections himself) 😅.

Hi Adrian A couple of days ago came across an interesting video where they show Olivetti's abandoned factory while telling the history of the company including many images of those glorious times. These facillities where abandoned 20 years ago, but incredibly, there still are tools, furniture, workstations, printers, ink, monitors, packaging, and even an archive room with the blueprints of their products, buildings and projects. Worth watching it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jmi7dpRtqahqrrc&t

[@geoffbeier]

The lines and grass on the F1 car box floor look like pole position graphics. It's better with those in place. Don't separate it from that, even if you do open it.

[@JohnKnutsson]

The Olivetti M24 (And commodore pc10) was my entry into the PC world

[@adriansdigitalbasement2]

I have an AT&T 6300 I need to get onto the main channel too. So really I have two Olivettis in the house!

[@mikes989]

I rescued a M24 motherboard about a year ago. Is waiting for restoration. Didnt found the videocard , nor the backplane but I think any ISA raiser will do

[@twocvbloke]

The first windows PC that was actually mine was an Olivetti, a PCS P/75n (Pentium 75, 16MB RAM (later 32), 850MB HDD, 4x speed Sony CD-ROM, Creative Vibra16 sound & modem card, and played a lot of Duke Nukem 3D on it!), though that one sadly died around 22 years ago, but I have a very similar Olivetti Modulo M4-75s (virtually identical aside from the front panel), which I've had for a good 16-17 years, also have an Olivetti Lettra 22 typewriter somewhere I had intended to restore, but never got around to it, but like many past brands, it's pretty much just a shell name now for sticking on generic stuff...

[@Ran-tan-tan]

When you get candy from Europe, check the back of the bag! Quite often there is an ingredients list in English.

[@ReneKnuvers74rk]

38:48 even Yamaha, the synthesizer company made MSX computers. They were used for midi sequencing before the Atari ST took over that market.

[@ManuelBilderbeek]

You'll want the RGB output for the best quality. I wonder if the lack of green is only on the composite output, or also on RGB. Enjoy your MSX2!

[@kobe3576]

You should definitely get an EPSON PC-286C computer.

[@andygozzo72]

nice beasts! i have a transformer in same type case as that but it switchable, 120-240 or 240-120 and has a 'universal' output socket

[@andygozzo72]

in the pc1, those yellow/orangey jacketed ROE / ERO electrolytics are notoriously iffy and likely to short or leak, just replace that, and any others of that type, possibly the output caps, and test the psu with dummy loads, it'll likely be ok , dont put a different one in unless a last resort, keep it as original as possible!

[@pauledwards2817]

Personal computer world magazine uk reviewed this. May have info of use. I do recall being underwhelmed by the spec for the price. Schools may have liked it of course.

[@enricoself2256]

In my parent attic I have the predecessor to the PC1, a Thomson MO6 clone labelled Olivetti Prodest PC128. I got it as a Xmas present in place of the requested Commodore C64 and it had a similar design as the PC1 with a cassette recorder in place of the floppy disk. It had limited graphics and sounds capabilities compared to the C64 and it could only boast 128kb of RAM. I bought several games which, again, were repackaged games for the Thomson MO6 in most case not even bothering to translate the french text messages. It was very good as a Basic training computer and that is very I started programming. But for games, quite disappointing; for the next round I made sure to get an Amiga 500.