The Olivetti M20 is a

Zilog Z8000 The Z8000 ("''zee-'' or ''zed-eight-thousand''") is a 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog in early 1979. The architecture was designed by Bernard Peuto while the logic and physical implementation was done by Masatoshi Shima, assisted by a ...

based computer designed and released by

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...

in 1982. Although it offered good

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

, it suffered from a lack of software due to its use of the Z8000 processor and custom

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

, PCOS. The company introduced the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

compatible

Olivetti M24 The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU. The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel/Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as t ...

in 1983 and the M20 line was phased out.

History

System design began in 1979 in

Cupertino, California Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,8 ...

at Olivetti's Advanced Technology Center. When announced on March 31, 1982, it was probably the first 16-bit personal computer in Europe with an expected price range of US$3,000-6,000. ''InfoWorld'' magazine saw the M20 as an "answer to Tandy's Model 16, the

IBM Personal Computer The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

and the

Apple III The Apple III (styled as apple ///) is a business-oriented personal computer produced by Apple Computer and released in 1980. Running the Apple SOS operating system, it was intended as the successor to the Apple II series, but was largely consi ...

"; Olivetti itself compared its computer to the IBM PC, Sirius Victor, Commodore 8000 and

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

in television advertising. Although the computer was initially well received, its use of a non-standard OS (Olivetti's proprietary PCOS) and CPU (Zilog Z8001) proved to be its most serious limitations. The first major software package was a word processor by SofSys called ''Executive Secretary'', followed later by another word processor, ''OliWord'', and business software, ''Olibiz''. There was also

Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first ve ...

5.2 with full support for the hardware's features. To alleviate a lack of applications, Olivetti sold a

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

emulator for US$300 and distributed certain CP/M software packages (

dBase II dBase (also stylized dBASE) was one of the first database management systems for microcomputers and the most successful in its day. The dBase system includes the core database engine, a query system, a forms engine, and a programming language ...

and

SuperCalc SuperCalc is a CP/M-80 spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980. History VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program but its release for the CP/M operating system ran only on the HP-125, Sharp MZ80, and the Sony SMC-70. SuperCalc w ...

) for their computer. Olivetti later introduced the "Alternate Processor Board" (APB 1086), based on an 8 MHz

Intel 8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowi ...

CPU for compatibility with

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and

CP/M-86 CP/M-86 was a version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format. Digital Research als ...

software. In January 1984, Olivetti introduced a new IBM PC-compatible computer, the

, running MS-DOS as a "complement" to the Olivetti M20. Olivetti sold around 50,000 M20 computers in the first year of production.

Features

M20 uses Zilog Z8001 4 MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM, which can be expanded up to 512 KB by three 128 KB memory boards. Keyboard, motherboard and disk drives are contained in all-in-one unit with separate monitor. The computer has also

parallel Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of IBM ...

(

IEEE-488 IEEE 488 is a short-range digital communications 8-bit parallel multi-master interface bus specification developed by Hewlett-Packard as HP-IB (Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus). It subsequently became the subject of several standards, and is ...

) and

serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

( RS-232-C). Standard configuration includes two 5-inch 320 KB

floppy disk drives A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

(286 KB formatted capacity). Optional were 160 KB or 640 KB (compatible with 320 KB disks) drives or 5-inch

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

in place of one of the floppy disk drives (9.2 MB formatted capacity). Motherboard has two expansion slots intended for the

hard disk controller {{unreferenced, date=May 2010 The disk controller is the controller circuit which enables the CPU to communicate with a hard disk, floppy disk or other kind of disk drive. It also provides an interface between the disk drive and the bus conne ...

board, additional parallel interface, twin serial interface or Corvus Omninet LAN card. This slot is also used by the APB 1086 CPU card. M20 provides 512 × 256

display resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is ...

on 12-inch

monochrome A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, monochrom ...

or color monitor. With memory expanded by two 32 KB memory boards, the computer can display 8 colors. When using only one additional memory board, only 4 colors form 8 color palette are available. All graphics is pixel-generated (there is no specific

text mode Text mode is a computer display mode in which content is internally represented on a computer screen in terms of characters rather than individual pixels. Typically, the screen consists of a uniform rectangular grid of ''character cells'', each ...

), text characters use resolution 64 characters per 16 rows (or 80 characters per 25 rows). Keyboard lacks , and keys - their function can be mapped on or special keys by the "Change Key" system utility. Instead of standard

function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...

s, user defined special functions are invoked by pressing orange-colored or light-blue-colored key along with another key (creates 24 user-definable function keys).

Numeric keypad A numeric keypad, number pad, numpad, or ten key, is the palm-sized, usually-17-key section of a standard computer keyboard, usually on the far right. It provides calculator-style efficiency for entering numbers. The idea of a 10-key nu ...

serves also as cursor controls.

PCOS

PCOS (Professional Computer Operating System) is a single-user, single-tasking

. It was used on the Olivetti M20 and L1 computers. The first version (PCOS 1.0) supports 14 characters long filenames, with no directories and a limit of 192 files per disk (called ''volume''). PCOS requires significant part of the main memory. Operating system with

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

interpreter takes 64 KB RAM, another 16 KB are reserved for screen output and user is left with only around 40 KB RAM on unexpanded machine. Version 2.0 supports

dynamic memory allocation Memory management is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when ...

alleviating

segmented memory Memory segmentation is an operating system memory management technique of division of a computer's primary memory into segments or sections. In a computer system using segmentation, a reference to a memory location includes a value that identifi ...

limitations of the Z8000 CPU. PCOS can protect by password volumes (disks), individual files and BASIC programs (against listing/editing/copying). Standard OS configuration includes BASIC interpreter, other programming languages (

Assembler Assembler may refer to: Arts and media * Nobukazu Takemura, avant-garde electronic musician, stage name Assembler * Assemblers, a fictional race in the ''Star Wars'' universe * Assemblers, an alternative name of the superhero group Champions of A ...

and

PASCAL Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...

) are optional. Example PCOS commands: * vformat - formats a volume * vrename - changes the name of a volume * vpass - changes the volume password * vlist - file list * vquick - quick file list * vcopy - volume copy * fcopy - file copy * flist - display a text file contents * basic - run the BASIC interpreter * dconfig - system configuration * slanguage - system regional settings

Notes

References

External links

Video, Retro Computer museum, Zatec, Czech Republic video
{{Authority control Olivetti personal computers Computer-related introductions in 1982