Googling M300-02 dredged up some documentation:
https://secure.corradoroberto.it/doc/olivetti … tems1/cap40.pdf

It helps answer some questions.

HDD/CF might be a problem. It looks like this machine has very, very limited BIOS options and you can basically only install a small number of pre-defined HDDs.

Memory? 30p FP SIMMs capable of doing 16MHz (i.e. just about any 4MB SIMM you come across). Officially specced at 80ns, so 80ns or lower is fine. "x9" means it has to be parity memory (odd number of chips on SIMM)

As for video, it has a WD90C11A, which is a nice fast 8 bit colour DOS option. As for RAM, no idea. There are two chips already on the board, two more with same layout and at least same timings should do the trick.

The feature connector is a VESA feature connector, used by some MPEG decoder cards. It's part of the VGA subsystem.

You don't go into the requirement of getting data to it, but I'd recommend using the second ISA slot for an Ethernet card, something simple like a 3Com 3C509 or an Intel EtherExpress 8/16. There are good packet drivers available for both that work fine with mTCP. Run an FTP server and you can transfer whatever you need.

Thanks for the reply.

Networking sounds like a good idea actually.

Would another option be to install an ISA card that provides an ide header then connect a CF card to that?

Not really. The problem with IDE is in BIOS, not in the controller. If you want to expand that, you need something like XTIDE, a BIOS extension that you flash onto an E(E)PROM and stick into a suitable socket. The easiest place to do that is... on a network card. So just be sure to get a NIC with a ROM socket and you're good to go on that count too.

Thanks for the help. Time to go shopping again 😀

The saga continues....

I did a bit of a tear down at the weekend to give the machine a clean and to try and repair the floppy drive and that is the topic of today's questions

Windows reports the disk won't initialize. On inspection the motor that controls the heads moved fine but and the disc spins but its hard to see if its spinning at the correct rate. I cleaned the heads and lubricated the rails with no luck (didn't expect it to fix it to be honest but no harm in trying). There are 2 capacitors that look ok but I've ordered replacements anyway. Interesting point though was that I tried to connect another spare floppy drive I had lying but on that drive the access light stayed on permanently? I know from my amiga that would generally happen if the ribbon cable is plugged in upside down but it couldn't be here as the connector is keyed to the ribbon. Any ideas why this might of happened? Is the floppy drive using a custom interface? ( I don't think so) Putting the old drive back in again it operates as you would expect, it just won't read anything.

Also just to update I've ordered an ESS soundcard and a NIC with an empty rom socket. They should be here this week (with the replacements caps for the floppy) so I'll keep this thread updated as and when I get stuff done or more accurately as and when I hit another stumbling block 😁

Some FDDs were manufactured with the socket key being on the wrong side. Sony had a model or two like that - a nice way to damage your mobo/controller, or the drive itself. No, they did not pay you back, these drives were all sold to OEMs who were supposed to know about this... issue, and use different or not keyed cables.
Or it could be a different pinout - not in PCs but then again this is a somewhat custom machine already if it has RAM chips soldered to the mobo. FM Towns is "PC-like" with guts very close to what this Olivetti has and uses different FDDs. But it's also Japanese so there's that.

Old FDDs are often belt driven and if the belt is old it could be streched, or rotted and gone completly and is not able to rotate the floppy at the correct speed. Remove the drive and see what kind of spindle system it uses.

Didn't notice any belts when I had it apart for cleaning but I'll be doing a complete strip down once I get the new caps so I'll get a look under the board at that point.

The cable looks like your standard floppy ribbon with a 5.25" connector in the middle of it and the 3.5" connector with a twist just before the drive. In fact just thinking out loud while typing this could the twist in the ribbon be the issue for the spare newer drive?

I've not given up on the old drive yet and if anything the newer one won't fit anyway. To be honest if I can't get it working I'm starting to lean towards just leaving it as is. In all likely hood I'll never use it anyway.

Today I installed and configured the ESS sound card. Very happy so far but I'd like to get the CD drive working. Using the IDE port on the sound card I installed a CD drive and I've loaded the CD drivers which seem to work but I cannot access the drive as in it doesn't mount in dos or windows 3.1

My thinking is that I just need to copy MSCDEX across and use that to assign a drive letter and mount the drive?

Edit: just for an update on the floppy drive. I tried to replace the caps on the board but it made no difference, still doesn't work. I ended up getting my spare floppy working fine, I just had to modify the socket on it to accept the upside down keyed cable on the computer. The spare drive is too tall though to fit in the olivetti.