VOGONS


First post, by scroeffie

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a friend gave me a 8088 machine ,i have a couple of questions
we dont know how to upgrade the ram and is it possible to turn off the onboard vga and use a external card
https://olivrea.de/olivetti-pcs-86/ < its this pc
maybe a olivetti expert has a manual thanks

Reply 1 of 10, by Zup

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AFAIK, it's not a 8088 but an V30. That means:
- 16 bits data bus.
- Faster CPU (it can do 10Mhz instead of 8, and some instructions take less clocks in an V30 than in a 8086).
- It has some instructions borrowed from 80186/80286 (I remember they were needed to run some VGA drivers on Windows 3.0).

AFAIR, it could be upgraded to 2.5Mb using that memory slots; the board support EMS. I have a copy of spanish OS disks. In the photos you can see the HDD, a Conner CP3026... in some sites it says it's IDE (that would be good news) but others says it is XTA (bad news, you'll need an XT-IDE adapter).

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Reply 2 of 10, by dionb

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That's not an 8088 machine (with 8b external bus), but an 8086-class one, with 16b external bus, and V30 CPU. Much more powerful beast, although in terms of instruction sets it's basically still and XT.

Looking at the pics in your own link, it has 30p SIMM slots, so you upgrade the RAM with 30p SIMMs. The V30 still has the 8086/8088 limitation of a 20b address bus, so max directly accessible RAM is 1MB, and only the first 640kB of that is available for programs. So 2x 256kB is the only sensible option.

If you want more than 640kB, you need to use EMS, so you need to look for either a vintage EMS card, or a modern implementation such as the Lo-Tech 2MB EMS card. Note that your software also needs to support EMS to use it.

Edit: looks like the board is more advanced than I credited it with. 2x 1MB SIMMs are the way to go then.

As for VGA - it could be possible, maybe you don't even need to turn it off. What do you think to gain by an external card?

Reply 3 of 10, by scroeffie

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nothing was just wondering if its possible to use a external vga i called it a 8088 machine because its all the same to me 😀
dont know how to upgrade the ram and what type of ram this is
already have a hdd installed 200mb works perfect and also made a xt ide card with a 256mb cf card and a gotek
i also upgraded to a real pc speaker ,next upgrade wil be a adlib clone card waiting for the parts.
it also has a pin head but i dont know what its for reset button ??

Reply 5 of 10, by scroeffie

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is 1 mb max ?

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Reply 6 of 10, by timw4mail

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30pin simms came in a lot of densities, so just having two slots doesn't mean a 1MB limit. That said, it's up to the memory controller on the board how much memory it can support.

Be careful with those SIMM slots...the plastic clip slots are notoriously fragile.

Reply 8 of 10, by AlaricD

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scroeffie wrote on 2022-08-22, 14:09:

i have 30p sim mem they dont fit they are to long ! iam impressed with the games that it can run on

30-pin SIMMs are 30-pin SIMMs. Make sure you're not inserting them backwards.

Reply 10 of 10, by rasz_pl

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2x 1MB 30pin should cost under $10 + shipping, shipping can be another $10 so better to find locally 😀

Olivetti Prodest PC1 HD had weird rare 8bit IDE, someone even figured out a mod enabling CF support with onboard controller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXsGHbunodA
Looks like Olivetti upgraded to full 16bit IDE for your model.

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