9 Sep
2011
9 Sep
'11
10:28 a.m.
I didn't know the guts were under the motherboard
proper (or more accura=
tely on the underside of the mobo). So I scrounged the memory and whatnot=
, and tossed the rest out. I had assumed that this unit was missing the c=
pu card, seeing there wasn't one present, as would be the case in a prope=
r well bred fine piece of computing garbage.
I know it's easy to be wise in retrospect, but that's why you remove
every bit of casing uyou can ;-)
Hang on though... IIRC this machine there are external connectors
(keyboard, printer, probably RS232) on thr CPU board. If you take the top
cover off the machine, you can't see the backs of these conenctors, which
should imply there's something hidden under the main chassis.
Incidentally, some later Olivetti machines had a more traditional passive
backplane design with the CPU/memory on an ISA card.
Repeat it was in the not knowing where the guts were that made me to per=
form this horrible act of indecency.
And incidentally, I do like them. I just somehow dislike them at the sam=
e time (they're just different, unorthodox in some ways). They earned gen=
I thought we tended to like the unorthodox stuff here :-)
eral high marks w/me, being they were pretty much
fully compatible, and y=
et had that 640 x 400 color option. I've never owned a color capable 6300=
/M24/Xerox ?, but still want to :(
My HP series 9000 PC305 is also missing it's cpu card (and the 68000 boa=
rd thing also). Don't worry, I thoroughly checked underneath the motherbo=
ard - nothing there. If anyone can help me out, I'd be most indebted.
This can be another result of board-swapping :-(. The previous owner
finds a board has failed (ither from the diagnostics, or by swapping it
with one in a similar machine) and then throws out the defective board
becuase it's (incorrectly) believed it can't be repaired. Oh well...
-tony