During the lock down, I have been looking over a number of my old computers and working on repairs and general setup of these machines. I will of course have to retro-actively document some of these, but a machine is on its way that I am especially looking forward to.
To provide some context, let us run over some personal history. In 1994 my Father purchased an Olivetti computer, replacing his obsolete NEC V20 based NESS 2000. I have never found any information on this old machine, but the computer was a well-built business machine from the late 1980’s. That meant a crisp, 12 inch amber phosphor display that I rather miss today, but back when I wanted to run Elite was greatly unappreciated. It’s 1.2MB floppy drive was a great unit, but incompatible with most 1990’s computers. A 20MB MFM hard drive was both slow and easily filled up – though at least it had one. 640Kb of RAM was hardly cutting edge either, though enough for DR-DOS 3.41 and GEM 2.0. As you might guess, it was utterly hopeless at handling any task that most people wanted to do by the mid-1990’s and with hindsight the software supplied did nothing to help. Sadly this machine is long gone – it died before I had the resources, knowledge and most importantly – the desire to repair it.
The computer that replaced this was an Olivetti PCS40 SX/25. In common with many ‘budget’ offerings at the time, this came with the extremely popular 486 SX CPU at 25MHz, 4MB of RAM, a 120MB hard drive and VGA graphics. Compared to what we had been using, this machine was light years ahead of the NESS 2000. Setting aside the full colour graphics, the 486 SX was blisteringly fast compared to the NEC 8088-clone. Running Microsoft Windows 3.1, there was finally a modern and useful Graphical User Interface available. And of course, there was Battle Chess.
It was a sleek looking machine as well. I only have a grainy image taken from a YouTube video to show you – but in person and compared with the clunky beige box that preceded it, this slender, grey machine with obvious styling flair was magnificent.
Of course hindsight coupled with knowledge is a wonderful thing. I don’t think we could realistically call this a great computer. It relied upon the old 30 pin SIMM standard for its memory, limiting future upgrade potential. The drive controller (which ultimately died, taking the machine with it) was slow and limited. The supplied graphics card, whilst at least replaceable, was really nothing to brag about – sporting 512KB of RAM, an OAK chipset from the dark ages and no bit-blitter for Windows acceleration. Let us not forget the 8-bit ISA bus, already limiting to a 386 DX, was positively stone age to a more modern 486 machine still being sold in 1994.
It did receive a few upgrades in its life. An additional 4MB of RAM was the first order, with any productivity tasks being run on less proving to be a painful experience. More so given that my Father had acquired a hand-held scanner and was dabbling with image editing. Then of course came a multimedia package including a sound card, double speed CD-ROM drive and the usual tinny speakers that nevertheless sounded wonderful in comparison to the PC speaker. Later, a 540MB hard disk was added to suplement that 120MB Conner unit, the latter having been filled quite easily.
As you may imagine, as fantastic as this machine seemed when first acquired, its limitations quickly became apparent, even if we did not fully understand why it was so limited. What did a math co-processor really do for the early to mid-90’s PC user? Could it do SVGA was an extremely important question at one point – the stock machine apparently only able to run the lower resolution VGA mode. After spending a time looking at new monitors, my Father found out that a simple driver would do the job. But we had no notion of Windows acceleration or any real knowledge of the impact of graphics card memory. But a later upgrade to a Comaq Presario 4108 with it’s 120MHz Pentium processor came with far more upgrades than just the processor improvement alone – and was subsequently another huge upgrade (I still have this machine incidentally).
At this point I am fully cognizant of the rambling nature of this post, but aside from the obvious indulgence into nostalgia, I am also recording the feelings and experience of many nascent computer enthusiasts from back at that time. We knew very little and the pace of change was blisteringly fast – far more so than today in many practical ways. Furthermore, in the last 20 years, most of the machines that I have nurtured and cherished have been upgraded to the best of their type. The above mentioned Compaq has been fully upgraded, with new processor, graphics card and drives. The 486 that I bought to replace the PCS40 was another Olivetti, but the last of its type and designed as an alternative to low-end Pentium class machines. I also still have this computer and again, it has been comprehensively upgraded.
And so it struck me, most low-end computers of the time will not have survived. Most, even if retained will have been upgraded significantly. As such, we are likely to lose an aspect of computing history. The experience of practical, budgetary compromise. What was better, a 386 DX or 486 SX? Between 1991 and 1993 this was a very real decision that had to be made. But that is a decision that is hard to test today if only because so few SX machines survive. I absolutely love my Olivetti 486 (a PCS D4/100n for the record), but it does not allow me to relive my first 486 experience.
That is set to change.
The Olivetti PCS44/C was a higher end offering from Olivetti for the small business user. It was based on an existing design that had been used since at least the 286 era, but was equipped with a 25MHz Intel 80486 SX. Back in 1993 this would have been quite a costly machine, as the image from an Argos catalogue from 1993 below can show.
At the time of writing, that £1149 translates to £2358 today in 2020. To put it mildly, that is not chump change. So whilst this was not a high end computer, it was certainly an expensive one and likely to be used for serious purpose back at that time.
I will be taking delivery of just such a machine soon and documenting it here. I do not expect it to be in working order necessarily, although it does look complete. What I will be excited to do is to compare it with my upgraded 386 SX machine released in 1991 as well as its Olivetti successor complete with the near fastest 486 CPU, the AMD 5×86 at 133MHz. So if you’re interested, watch this space, as I will be documenting the journey.
