Try running CheckIt to see if there is a ram issue. 8megs is a bit lean as well. 16megs would be better. 32 ideal.

A small update for this peculiar machine, as it is driving me cRaZy and this might help someone in the future.
This pc has a special feature as it was meant to operate under your TV set in a standby mode. It is supposed to be able to instantly restore the last state of the machine so you can continue whatever it was you were doing by not waiting for it to boot.

It has a on/off power switch on the power supply (in the back of the pc) and it also has a ON/Standby micro switch on the front panel. I found out that my front panel is probably bad as the pc will enter standby mode right after the bios screen (before booting from a disk). Every once in a while it might just work and continue booting but it is very unstable so I decided to disconnect it by unplugging the tiny ribbon cable from the motherboard.

The original keyboard for this pc is wireless and is connected through infrared on the front panel. I don't have the original keyboard and I am just using a PS/2 keyboard and mouse. ( I don't have a clue if this is somehow affecting the strange behaviour). Note that I also checked the memory and it is fine, I even upgraded to 24mb by install a 16mb module. Another useful note is that it has a Goldstar GCD-R540B Cdrom Drive that needs a special driver (windows 95 boot discs will not detect it). The hard disk is a Conner CFS-425A drive 425mb (Cyl 839, Hds 16, Sect 62, Lzone 839, WPcomp 0)

With the front panel unplugged, Windows 95 is only booting in Dos Mode and Safe mode. Normal mode is just freezing. Normal mode is only working when the front panel is connected to the motherboard but as I said the pc rarely passes the bios boot screen with the panel connected.

With the panel disconnected I discovered that if you enter safe mode, go to Control Panel-> Power Option and disable Windows power management the pc manages to boot in Normal mode. My theory is that Windows power managemnt some how conflicts with the "instant on" feature and crashes. I don't have the original discs so maybe there is a special driver or setting that will allow it to co-exist.

For the moment the pc is working fine and I will try to find all the correct drivers and software. If there is any interest I will post more updates.

This is the front panel disconnected:

This is the riser card, I have nothing installed as VGA, sound card, MIDI, IDE, even SCART connections are on board.

The front panel is connected to the white connector via the ribbon cable,

Caluser2000 wrote:

Try running CheckIt to see if there is a ram issue. 8megs is a bit lean as well. 16megs would be better. 32 ideal.

Someone could say so. Though in pratice, with anything below 32MiB of RAM, Win95 will likely swap to disk constantly.
- Windows 98SE is much better in this regard (has intelligent memory managment, can execute aligned applications straight from cache).
It will run snappy with 24MiB of RAM, for example. If there wasn't that new explorer, 98SE would have been even better here.
(I guess that's old story, but back in the day my father upgraded his 386DX40, an office PC, to 16MiB of RAM just for Win95 RTM.
And the HDDs were still busy while the PC was idling. Sure, it will boot with 4MiBs, too.. But so will OS/2 Warp. 😉 )

Jo22 wrote:

Caluser2000 wrote:

(I guess that's old story, but back in the day my father upgraded his 386DX40, an office PC, to 16MiB of RAM just for Win95 RTM.
And the HDDs were still busy while the PC was idling. Sure, it will boot with 4MiBs, too.. But so will OS/2 Warp. 😉 )

At least OS/2 shipped with IBM Works and PIM so you could do something productive with it instead of just staring at clouds :p Oh my apologies that's right it had Wordpad and Paint. OS/2 also shipped with a 3D Chess game.

Just found this. Envision 400 and P75 were designed for the first version of Windows 95. But originally Envision comes with a lot of extra drivers. If you need them, I can share. I have working P75 with all what is necessary.

1ST1 wrote on 2021-09-19, 11:57:

Just found this. Envision 400 and P75 were designed for the first version of Windows 95. But originally Envision comes with a lot of extra drivers. If you need them, I can share. I have working P75 with all what is necessary.

Hello 1ST1, Im trying to install Olipilot on my windows 95 Envision P75 but Im not able at all. Could you please tell how to do it? I have "ENV ITA 21" downloaded.

Hello, I don't know what is the Enivita21, is that Italian envision install CD? I only have German one and I never installed by myself as it already was preinstalled on a 2 GB hard disk.

By the way, the behaviour that the Envision goes to sleep mode after ac power on is normal. You can not change this. After it has gone to sleep, just power it on at the front button or at the remote control and it will run until you send it to sleep or you power it off.

1ST1 wrote on 2021-12-08, 16:58:

Hello, I don't know what is the Enivita21, is that Italian envision install CD? I only have German one and I never installed by myself as it already was preinstalled on a 2 GB hard disk.

By the way, the behaviour that the Envision goes to sleep mode after ac power on is normal. You can not change this. After it has gone to sleep, just power it on at the front button or at the remote control and it will run until you send it to sleep or you power it off.

Do you have original software CD and 3,5 restoration disk for Olivetti Envision?
Coul be possible to upload this software to a dropbox or smthing like that?

Yes, I have, but german version only.

Hi guys, i'm registered specialy to ask for help with Envision machine. It's a fist time for me being so frustrated with PC. No ide device working with it and i can't even get to bios settings to manually set up hard drive - i tried all combinations i knew. I can boot from floopy or XTIDE, but IDEinfo don't see any hard drive connected also. There is also some random reboots and if you try to reset via ctr-alt-del it just make this thing go to sleep/audiocd mode. I've disconnected the front board, but it didn't change much, besides reset and going to sleep mode right after turing on. Random reboots makes me think that there is some problems with power supply, but i think i can get rid of it. I would appreciate any help and technical documentation, so as recovery cd's copy on any language know to mankind. I think it will be great for keeping PC history alive to upload it to some platform like archive.org. Or just send it to me if you don't want to bother 😀

1ST1 wrote on 2022-03-18, 19:11:

Yes, I have, but german version only.

German version would be better than nothing!

TechHorder wrote on 2022-11-21, 16:10:

i can't even get to bios settings to manually set up hard drive - i tried all combinations i knew.

If I remember correctly, you press space bar just after power on. It's been a while though, just got mine out of storage to revisit it.

I have some files for the Envision that I downloaded at least 10 years ago. Among them are the files "recovery disk_2.1.exe" and "recovery disk_2.4.exe". I'm going to try them out later this week, and hopefully we can at least get the floppes. Unfortunately I don't seem to have an image of the recovery CD.