The Weird Processor: Olivetti's PC Typewriter
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- I dug deep on this one: I found the only word processor worth a minute of your time!
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Chapters:
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:23 Word Processors (in summary)
00:19:50 Introducing the Olivetti
00:21:00 The Video Situation
00:27:10 Starting up
00:28:45 Software tour
00:45:18 The hidden PC
00:48:46 The wacky keyboard
00:51:39 PC software demo
00:53:01 Limitations and weirdnesses
00:58:05 Teardown
01:03:28 Olivetti: The Original Republic Of Gamers
01:08:09 Conclusion / Outro - Věda a technologie
Couple things I'd like to address:
1) "Why is it just MDA?"
It isn't. I was wrong, and I'm doing some testing to figure out what the machine is actually capable of. It can *at least* do CGA, and might even have some kind of half baked EGA support. I don't know how my initial testing failed to catch this.
2) "Why did Olivetti design it this way?"
Olivetti was actually a pretty significant name in computing in the 80s, and among other things, they produced some _very_ early PC clones. They also owned a chunk of VLSI, and were apparently heavily involved in designing custom PC chipsets.
That got me thinking: it's very possible that they developed this custom MDA-like chip four or five _years_ prior, circa 83 or 84 when it made a lot more sense to stick with plain MDA. Then when the ETV2700 came along, they just reused the work they'd already done, since it didn't cost anything. I haven't yet found proof of this, but it makes sense.
3) "Can it run Doom?"
I have to be honest, I find this joke a bit old and tired, but to answer the question, no, it can't, and it never will. Most versions of Doom are incapable of running on anything less than a 386. FastDoom is a recent project that can run on a 286, but this machine is 8086-class.
There is 8088Doom, but it's in a very early stage of development, and only works if you have a hard drive. It also can't output to an MDA display. FastDoom does have an MDA mode, which could maybe be integrated into 8088Doom, but honestly it's just not any fun to play that way. There are other games I would MUCH rather see. If I'd been thinking, I might have fired up ZZT, and if I wanted to see someone put in a ton of effort for a stunt, I'd rather see something like Commander Keen, which would be a lot more playable in textmode.
You forgot to mention the Programma 101 at the beginning of the video...the 1st PC ever made.Ciao.
Bit of perspective from someone who was there at the time... A lot of these were aimed at secretarial pools and professional typists. Typing was a separate skill (and a qualification that you earned ratings in,) that you learned if being a "typist" was going to be part of your profession - like operating a lathe or something. The top typing speed wasn't linked to the operator speed, but to the dictation speed. If you weren't high up in the hierarchy to have your own secretary, that would do the typing for you - after writing down your dictation in shorthand - you dictated to a dictaphone, or wrote out in longhand and dropped that off to a typist pool - which would operate the Olivetti style machines. Having a file menu wasn't important, each project would have its own floppy, or more, the file names would be written on the floppies - for ease of future filling - in a physical file drawer together with hardcopies and any other relevant documents.
As a private person, if you needed a typed document, say to submit a thesis for PhD or court; you'd write it out in longhand, then hire a freelance typist. They would type out a copy (optionally providing an editing service at extra cost, for grammar, spelling etc.) You would review the hard copy and mark up any changes, rinse and repeat, until you were happy with the final version. Usually, you were charged per word or character plus fees for edits etc. Often there would be a limit to the number of proofs. A freelancer temping at a business, would normally charge an hourly based on their wpm and experience.
If your document needed to have graphics, such as charts, you'd then take the copy and your graphics to a type setting place - you'd pay a fortune.
This is why the unintuitive interfaces, they were mostly professional tools; your criticism of the gui is like complaining that modern CnC machines aren't user friendly, they are not meant to be used by the general public. People learned the chonker manual, because it was their job to learn it. Also, computer manuals had to be thorough enough for orgs to produce their own training material from them.
Don't be misled by advertising showing them used by "real people." Those were meant to imply how easy it would be to convert your typing staff to the new WPs. It's good old sexism, your typing pool was 90% female and the stereotype was... well... not very technical. Despite the fact that they were the people who interacted with electronics most. The only electronic devices that most office workers had on their desk was a phone and maybe a calculator. For a very long time, the executive & managerial class saw operating a computer or WP as support staff labour, you wanted people to see that your secretary had a fancy Olivetti, at her desk in front of your office door - but, it wasn't something that you'd use. Electronics manufacturers spent a lot of ad revenue tying computers to emblems of modernity and success - that's how they got on exec. desks.
Modern media HUGELY, ENORMOUSLY, over represents the number of computers present in the 80s office space and homes. They look iconic and live far larger in our minds than they did in the past. If you walked into a random business in 1988, most of them would not own a single computer. It was all ledgers and filling cabinets. By the early 90s computers did start to infiltrate homes and freelance typists were a disappearing profession, this is what the small, cheap, single LCD WPs aimed to replace. The minimum viable thing to easily produce a typed document if required, say if you needed to submit something to your local council. Those were pitched at the part of the general public, who had no interest in computers. So most people over 40...
If you want to see what a typical office looked like in the 80s, look at the early episodes of "Yes, Minister." They are on CZcams, see if you spot a single computer... Again, modern media really over represents the number of computers in work environments of the time. Till mid 90s, a typical office space would not have any. By early 90s, there would be a computer room - where you'd go do computer stuff on a couple machines, if needed - then they slowly migrate out to individual desks.
The past is a different place.
PS. part of the reason, for the over representation of computers in modern depictions of the period, is that contemporary magazines and ad agencies loved to shove them into any photo shoot - they were signifiers of modernity and success. So, shove them into the article/ad. Want to sell expensive watches? Put a computer in the corner of a desk - just cut off the unsightly cables. If you went by media representation from the late 70s on, computers are powered by magic and all have wireless displays.
If you had a membership thru yt I would support you I just don't trust my card info on sites
Sorry Gravis, if you were trying to bore us with typewriters, you dramatically failed. This was a fantastic, interesting video, and yes, I’m still loving these weird beasts with their terrible user experiences. Your videos are always a great watch.
Shoot I popped popcorn. Or at least I tried put it in three times it didn't get all the kernels popped think my microwaves got problems.
I want an integrated amber phosphor PWP so bad. They are the neatest looking devices ever manufactured.
hold up, homeboy's name is Gravis? And he's not made an Ultrasound video yet?
@@TheRasteri Call in the dog see if it howls
This is as interesting as watching a video about pin printers but totally insane. I remember collecting printers back in the days where even the laser printers had been around for years for some reason many accounting systems kept relying on those old pin writers. And could sell them for a fair price whenever their old 24nail printers broke down. You should seriously donate all that junk to a school, lock their computers away and make a video how long it takes the kids to figure out how to use hem to write an essay 😆
“I want to be near that for no practical reason” perfectly describes how I feel about 99% of the things that catch my attention at RE-PC lol
If only those places existed in the south.
@@SonicBoone56same. I live in GA and every time I hear about someone's score at RE-PC I have to compare it to the time my Goodwill had a subwoofer once
Same bro, there are so many interesting things at those electronics recyclers.
Lol, my Goodwill got me the 1080p AIO that I use daily for 10 bucks, it doesn't play games too well, but it does it better than any new thing for that price, and it's also not the main focus. I don't think you can beat that deal from a brick and mortar without deals and favors.
I almost stopped by the store in Tukwila today but I was in waterworks mode after visiting someone at UW medical.
Assuming SWP was named under the same logic as SWS -- Secretary Work Station -- I would assume it's short for Secretary Word Processor.
Secretary Work Ptation!
I'll see myself out.
That makes no sense. Obviously it’s a British teenage prank.
Swp means Sony will make PlayStation
W was used as a placeholder for m because people commonly flipped their monitor physically to get landscape mode
It could also be Simple Word Perfect/Simple Word Star, depending on who was cheaper to license. I'm also betting that was the primary consideration for the outdated dictionaries.
My partner wanted to tell you that the reason it was super expensive and the custom programmes were so slick is because it was marketed to lawyers, who always base their purchasing on what sounds the most expensive and custom. (They're a soon-to-be former lawyer)
Very interesting!
Plus all the standardized forms with carbon copies. The ability to run WordPerfect is a plus.
I worked in a law office that still used one of these until it died in 2015. It was relegated to a corner of the office where it's only job was to type file labels.
In Germany, Olivetti typewriters and PC XT AT were the standard for tax consultants who work with DATEV (a cooperative) over the years.
I worked briefly at an Olivetti reseller in the 1990s. Loved the video and I hope I can add some cultural / contextual background.
Olivetti's are weird in part because they were coming at computers from their Business Machines background and this had a big impact on who they targeted.
Note the little silver branding tab stuck on the keyboard advertising the local business machines dealer it was sold through. Olivetti was a something you'd likely be introduced to by the folks who sold you your photocopier.
Our local reseller was owned by a family friend and I was in and around it and others for 15 years. Even in the late 1990s the showroom was dominated not with computers but photocopiers, electric typewriters, fax machines.
We shouldn't underestimate how many businesses held out with electronic typewriters until the turn of the century. While working as a technician in the late 90s I would visit workshops, factories, schools (mostly to fix photocopiers) and see so many being used in offices that were modernising, but without a single person on staff who'd ever touched a computer. As mentioned by other commenters hiring a person with typewriter skills was a lot easier than computer skills at this point.
The sales staff pitched the Olivetti PCs as an extension to the suite of machines you were already buying or leasing. They were often sold on support contracts, and serviced by their photocopier technicians.
Olivetti the company was designing and manufacturing a large line of complicated office machines, to which they added a PC line. I did a lot of work in the guts of Olivetti PCs and the physical design (fold away cases, swing-out components) seemed strongly influenced by those traditional machines. Support contracts are a big money and making photocopiers serviceable was core business.
This is entirely speculation - I wonder if the odd video output development was in any way influenced by the fact that Olivetti had video and lcd screens for their advanced photocopiers products.
The Panisonic looks really interesting! Its an electronic typewriter so maybe once you dig in it stops being interesting, but I want to know what a bunch of those applications are! Here are what their names are top to bottom left to right with my best guess at what they are.
日本語 - Japanese - Japanese text editor
欧文 - Western text - Latin character based text editor
図形（イメージ） - figure/graphic (image) - an image editor of some kind maybe?
線画 - Line art - figure drawing application?
機能説明 - Help file
住所録 - Address book
レイアウト名人 - Layout master - Maybe a form creator or a form filler application?
プレゼン名人 - Presentation master - Powerpoint type thing. Maybe you print out clear slides?
文章名人 - Writing master - No clue, maybe a different text editor with tools like table of contents?
カルク名人 - Calc master - Spreadsheet software
電卓・時計・カレンダ - Calculator, Clock, Calendar
DOSデータ交換 - DOS data conversion - converts from proprietary files to DOS compatible?
データノートII - Data Note II - maybe a lotus notes type thing?
通信 - Communication - Likely a modem program?
拡張 - Expansion - Not sure, maybe more programs under this as a submenu?
The mystery port says "image input output", I can't quite read the DSUB but I think it might just say "port", and the expansion ROM is a font package with 48 dot Gothic in the JIS format.
Thank you so much for the translation!
I read your first few words as "The Painsonic", and you never know, that might be correct.
I'm very very curious about the presentation mode; I saw that and immediately jumped to the comments to note that one because I can at least read that much!
Fun fact: italic *is* possible on a daisywheel printer, and I personally have seen it in action. It utilizes a daisywheel with two "rings" (or "rows"?) of characters, and the entire wheel assembly moves slightly up or down to select a "text palette".
It was a common-*ish* design in Eastern Bloc because, well, the RUS/LAT problem which needed some solution anyway. Such machines were equipped with two wheels, one for RUS/LAT on separate rows and other for cyrillic/italic cyrillic. Clever and effective.
P.S. The almost universal use of the KOI-7 encoding with a separate character (and key on the keyboard) for changing the layout also fit perfectly into this technical solution. When printing, the system sees the required character and not only changes the code table to Latin, but also instructs the printer to shift the wheel. Same with Italic, just without code table switching.
Some Chinese printers as well. I'm kind of glad we've largely moved past impact printers because as much as some of the solutions were incredible they were often so much headache if anything went wrong.
Some models of Diablo daisy wheel printers supported dual row wheels, and proportional pitch wheels. I used to have a Xerox 820-II Information Processor. (After their failure with Star and Alto, Xerox didn't "do computers".) It was a bog generic Z-80 CP/M machine with text only video. Connected to it by the serial port was a Diablo 630 daisy wheel printer. Very fast, very loud. Though when with WordStar I had it do bold doublestrike underline it got a lot slower, and louder. I only ever had one print wheel so I never got to see what other tricks it could do.
You are one of the only CZcamsrs (the other being Technology Connections) that can release a 1+ hr video, and I'll watch every minute of it without fail
Either one could do an hour long video of paint drying properties and it'd be a good watch!
@@joebates8659 And it would go something like, "The reason why GREEN dries faster is because of a mistake in the formula of chemical reactants that the manufacturers never fixed!"
It's these kinds of hypothetical facts that these guys somehow have a knack for digging up, makes everything interesting.
@@joebates8659 And what do ya know, Gravis blessed us with that knowledge bit about "Rogue" around 1:07:11. The only reason Rogue was ever ported to PC was because the original developer got a job at Olivetti as a consultant.
It doesn't seem like the reverse feature would waste ribbon to me, each character on one of these word processors uses the same linear amount of ribbon, and that amount of ribbon cannot be used again. So it's kind of wasting less ribbon, since it's using all of the ink/carbon on that length of ribbon, rather than leaving a lot of it on the ribbon.
Our shipping department still has an electronic typewriter in the cupboard, as they sometimes need it to fill out shipping papers that use a carbon copy (since other printing technologies are not able to imprint the character through the carbon paper onto the second sheet). So they still have some niche uses, whereas the "newer" word processor is completely obsolete.
9pin dot matrix printer can do carbon copies just fine, but you might have issues with alignment when filling out those forms.
But then you need Bursters and Decolatters. @@SianaGearz
@@SianaGearz I found it uniquely amusing and pleasing when I first learned maybe five or ten years ago that they still make new dot matrix printers for exactly that purpose.
@@ssokolow : I think there's also an aspect of near invulnerability. I'd be more willing to try a daisy wheel or dot-matrix in a dusty location than an inkjet or laser, due to fear of the dust infiltrating critical sections of the printer causing more immediate trouble with the ink jet & laser than the more mechanical alternatives.
@@absalomdraconis Good point.
That "Quickstart" wink was something that caught me off guard for a laugh, well played. And yes, Olivetti machines are fascinating for the fact that they're a pumpkin without their array of proprietary inputs.
I was a kid for whom writing with a pen never worked. At all. Doctor genes. My elementary school threw one of these at me and I immediately became way better at all the written things. So grateful that these were available in the market. No internet on them to distract. Just a word processor that processed words.
You can put a computer and disconnect the internet
Did you survive one of these being thrown at you?
@@tOSdude No he hath risen from the dead only to comment and never be heard from again.
I was the same way cant write ledgebly so i was also thrown something similar to these. It was a plastic keyboard with a 4 column text display. You got your text out of it by hooking it up to a computers keyboard port opening notepad and hitting send. I had typing classes and cheated with this i would type out what was on the screen hook up my keyboard and hit send. It could send text at over 300 Char a sec. lol
@@kreuner11 While true, the idea is less that there's no internet, but more that the machines are _unable_ to run other things. Don't need the internet for Commander Keen IV, and not being able to run it would prevent distraction.
1. Olivetti was a pretty substantial early computer player, their Elea line were some of the first transistorized mainframes introduced in the late 1950s (and the progeny of their Semiconductors division is part of ST).
They tried to exit the computer market on more than one occasion, the Elea line was sold to GE in 1964, who sold tens of thousands of them as the GE115 and successors. Then they found themselves dragged back into the small systems market by the mid 70s via their presence in the calculators and typewriters office appliance market, with a few bespoke machines then more commodity things like the Z80 CP/M boxes you mention and a slate of PC compatibles... it's a neat story.
2. You mention the Selectric and IBM/Lexmark Wheelwriter line as a comparison several times, which makes sense because they were ridiculously dominant so a lot of typewriter/wordprocessor conventions descend from them.
The wheel-writers are also daisywheels that do micro-shift bold and auto underline and such, and some of them do goofy things like beep spellcheck with no screen (I played with a 1500 that does that a while ago... it's a whole-ass NEC V20 based computer in there even with no screen or removable memory).
There were several earlier IBM fancy machines like the Selectric Composer that did a ...purely mechanical proportional font with 40 characters of lookback memory implemented with little sliding plates... and a variety of models with weird bespoke magnetic storage and such. Selectrics are insane clockwork bullshit that it makes absolute sense that they were instantly killed by the advent of microelectronics. Getting an "attic-fresh" one into working condition is an interesting challenge that involves a bunch of solvents and specific lubricants and hundred page long sequential adjustment manuals.
Later wheelwriters with line LCDs or attached CRTs or whatnot set a lot of the conventions for the kind of machines featured in this video.
3. If you want a truly interesting late wordprocessor/appliance computer thing, try to look at a Canon Cat. It was designed by Jef Raskin of Swyft and Macintosh fame, has a wildly sophisticated text-only interface for basic productivity software, infinite undo, etc. (and has a built in forth and assembly toolchain that you can drop into by special incantations). They are ...difficult... to obtain these days, though you can play with its software in MAME.
While looking up history you could read about Federico Faggin who started work at Olivetti developing computers, before moving to USA and developing the first micro processor for Intel. And then starting the company Zilog who made the Z80 processor
An Olivetti P652 computer system was gifted to our school in ~1984. It was a 4004 based system, with magnetic tape program storage cards about the size of a punch card, with a track of tape on each side), paper punch tape writer and reader (separate cabinets), typewriter, and 70K word fixed hard hard disk (single ~1cm thick platter)
the elea lie wasnt sold intentionally, it was bc the founder adriano olivetti died, olivetti got saved only by a clandestine project
Bit of perspective from someone who was there at the time... A lot of these were aimed at secretarial pools and professional typists. Typing was a separate skill (and a qualification that you earned ratings in,) that you learned if being a "typist" was going to be part of your profession - like operating a lathe or something. The top typing speed wasn't linked to the operator speed, but to the dictation speed. If you weren't high up in the hierarchy to have your own secretary, that would do the typing for you - after writing down your dictation in shorthand - you dictated to a dictaphone, or wrote out in longhand and dropped that off to a typist pool - which would operate the Olivetti style machines. Having a file menu wasn't important, each project would have its own floppy, or more, the file names would be written on the floppies - for ease of future filling - in a physical file drawer together with hardcopies and any other relevant documents.
As a private person, if you needed a typed document, say to submit a thesis for PhD or court; you'd write it out in longhand, then hire a freelance typist. They would type out a copy (optionally providing an editing service at extra cost, for grammar, spelling etc.) You would review the hard copy and mark up any changes, rinse and repeat, until you were happy with the final version. Usually, you were charged per word or character plus fees for edits etc. Often there would be a limit to the number of proofs. A freelancer temping at a business, would normally charge an hourly based on their wpm and experience.
If your document needed to have graphics, such as charts, you'd then take the copy and your graphics to a type setting place - you'd pay a fortune.
This is why the unintuitive interfaces, they were mostly professional tools; your criticism of the gui is like complaining that modern CnC machines aren't user friendly, they are not meant to be used by the general public. People learned the chonker manual, because it was their job to learn it. Also, computer manuals had to be thorough enough for orgs to produce their own training material from them.
Don't be misled by advertising showing them used by "real people." Those were meant to imply how easy it would be to convert your typing staff to the new WPs. It's good old sexism, your typing pool was 90% female and the stereotype was... well... not very technical. Despite the fact that they were the people who interacted with electronics most. The only electronic devices that most office workers had on their desk was a phone and maybe a calculator.
Modern media HUGELY, ENORMOUSLY, over represents the number of computers present in the 80s office space and homes. They look iconic and live far larger in our minds than they did in the past. If you walked into a random business in 1988, most of them would not own a single computer. It was all ledgers and filling cabinets. By the early 90s computers did start to infiltrate homes and freelance typists were a disappearing profession, this is what the small, cheap, single LCD WPs aimed to replace. The minimum viable thing to easily produce a typed document if required, say if you needed to submit something to your local council. Those were pitched at the part of the general public, who had no interest in computers. So most people over 40...
If you want to see what a typical office looked like in the 80s, look at the early episodes of "Yes, Minister." They are on CZcams, see if you spot a single computer... Again, modern media really over represents the number of computers in work environments of the time. Till mid 90s, a typical office space would not have any. By early 90s, there would be a computer room - where you'd go do computer stuff on a couple machines, if needed - then they slowly migrate out to individual desks.
The past is a different place.
PS. part of the reason, for the over representation of computers in modern depictions of the period, is that contemporary ad agencies loved to shove them into any photo shoot - they were signifiers of modernity and success. So, shove them into the ad. Want to sell expensive watches? Put a computer in the corner of a desk - just cut off the unsightly cables. If you went by media representation from the late 70s on, computers are powered by magic and all have wireless displays.
@@lucidnonsense942 Yea indeed people like to glorify the past but things were way more low tech for most people just because something existed doesn't mean everyone had .it i used to glorify the past too thinking once something was invented it was almost everywhere after a few years .now i am noticing his with 90s and early 2000s stuff too. like when people claim mp3 players were common in 1998 and nobody listened to cassettes anymore at that point. or that nobody used vhs in the year 2000 or everyone had a smartphone in 2010. i am sure that people in 2050 will be like why is this video not in 8k 8k existed in 2023 .
@@lucidnonsense942 It's SO common to still find sets where a desk phone is sitting there with nothing at all plugged into it. Maybe not even the handset to base cable. It's running on sheer suspension of disbelief.
Nah, your attempt to critique the critique doesn't really work. Why? Because typing is no longer a specialized skill, which, in turn, reveals that these interfaces are clunky. So the channel is correct, and you are wrong. I do appreciate the historical perspective, though, which is valuable on its own.
19:40 I don't think it's a matter of 'input lag'. When you type Japanese (I do it regularly) you write using 'sounds' (that's not correct, but that makes it easier to explain what I mean) and the software, after pressing the SPACE key, allows you to select from within a list what you mean by that chain of 'sounds'. So there's a key that'll give you 'ki' and other that'll give you 'ke', another to change that to 'ge' and finally one more to add a 'n' sound to the end. So you press all these and you get all the words that are a compound of the sounds 'ki ge n' (there's more than one, in this case). As you type more and more, the software 'learns' what you usually type and provides that as the first option, so you can just keep typing and the software would (theoretically) choose always the best option for you. What I think is happening here is that the software is still trying to do that, even in English mode (take note how it highlights all the word once you press the space key), even if it doesn't need to do so. It might have some amount of delay.... but I'm sure the delay is worse because of the way typing Japanese works. (edit: corrected a couple typos and incorrect punctuation)
Oh man, that makes sense, I hadn't considered that. There's a reason I said I wasn't the person to show this thing off!
@@CathodeRayDude I would bet it has more to do with page layout and pagination. Showing text in a proper word processing program is surprising complex. These, if they're using fixed-width fonts, have an advantage of not having to figure out the width and line height of characters, but they still need to tally up the number of chars / pixels per line, decide when it's time to wrap, figure out if there is any text below that needs to be pushed down a line, handle overflow of a page onto the next, and so on.
I would imagine a lot of this is happening even for the first character on the first line of the first page. At the very least, there's word counting, buffer management ...
And that doesn't even start to consider things like spell checking and grammar checking.
All this on a low-cost, low power, fanless processor from the dark days of computing, that was probably optimized for as little RAM usage as possible over speed, and software that was written to be as stable as possible so they didn't have to deal with updating ROMs on a gazillion machines owned by people who were, by definition, uncomfortable with the idea of owning a computer.
I think you're on the money there, some older Japanese dramas have similar delays on full on computers (the one I remember best was a G3 Power Mac) due to the predictive text/selection at play.
I remember typing pools at work, and the staff (generally of a older generation) resisting PCs as they feared they would have to do more tasks than the standard word processing services they provided. The pool had a lot of clout with office purchasing, they were PAs basically, and had the ear of management. Management would do anything to keep them happy, they didn't want to loose their typist, having a person type your letters made you important in the 80s. When the office finally went over to PCs, the typing pool soon disappeared, and the senior typists became PAs and staff were stuck having to type their own letter on a PC for the first time in their working lives. The Olivetti, feels like that last office holding on to what was already changing.
For a business, the difference in price between a PC and a word processor is essentially nil, but the ability to hire anyone off the street with basic typewriter skills (not computer training) would have been a pretty nice incentive to buy these. You have to figure that even if you gave a person with zero computer skills enough time, they would eventually become more productive compared to a mechanical or electric typewriter. (Maybe not, due to the lag factor.)
Anyway, overall point here is that "computer experience" in the 80s was exceedingly rare, outside of 'hey my kid played on one in his grade school'.
Yea we all know older people born before 1970 who can't even handle basic webbrowsing and a point and click ui now imagine most of the population being like that.
Dunno about that. Every one of those had specialized buttons that could be anywhere on the keyboard. At minimum they would still have to have the manual at hand on any given day to know how to do anything. Then there's the standard computer keyboard that you'd expect to be the same on any particular brand of computer and now they only need to know the software.
@@davidmcgill1000 I'd have to agree that it would have been more economical to give computer training; heck, anyone off the street with typewriting skills - they shouldn't have to take more than 4-5 hours to understand booting up a wordprocessor. With some effort it also could be setup to work exactly like an electronic typewriter, dunno, printing out every line of text when hitting return etc. And with long enough cables a PC doesn't need to look that imposing on a desk. Looks like so many missed marketing opportunities to me, the more I revisit the video. Which is hilarious, since, being a European, I smirk at the fact that most characters in TV shows work in the marketing/advertisement/similar business. Now I know it was not enough! Even worse in Europe.
Interesting fact about the Brother floppy drive - every floppy-enabled Brother device from sewing machines through knitting machines and later word processors used the same floppy format, the FB100. This was badged by Tandy for their portable devices like the M100 as the TPDD - Tandy Portable Disk Drive. It's now possible to read your Brother disks using a Fluxengine disk imaging tool thanks to me sending a raw dump of an FB100 disk to the Fluxengine creator @hjalfi, who added it as an option.
DC monitors - Chuck Peddle's Victor 9000 uses a separate 12V DC line from the PSU to power the CRT, neat. In Europe we had that machine as the ACT Sirius 1, and ACT went on to become Apricot who released a range of machines that also had DC powered monitors.
And you can actually rewire a "desktop floppy" drive to replace the original if it fails on you by cutting the ribbon cable and jumping the wires correctly.
You can also now read / write these disks using a Greaseweazle, which is a LOT cheaper than a Fluxengine.
Those Tandy drives are sought after by owners of old Brother electronic knitting machines.
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I was one of the folks who enjoyed this video. I had a buddy who's dad owned a typewriter business in the 80s. They began dabbling in computers as well, and had several of the hybrid style computer-typewriters frankenputers alongside Commodores, Ataris and Olivetti PCs.. We had a lot of fun discovering what they could, and more often, could not do. Then we went home to my C64 and his Atari 800. But to set a little context, imagine a law office with Barb in reception. Barb has been using typewriters for 40 years and is going to resist change. If you throw a PC on her desk, Barb will freeze up. If you throw down a typewriter with some delay in typing and a little bit of correction capability, Barb will likely adapt. Everyone likes Barb, so Barb will get into the 1980's one step at a time.The next kid you hire will likely have seen and played with a Pet 2001 or an Apple II in school. They will jump into the PC with no real issue. Now Barb and the new kid will both move to PC and this point in time frankenputer will lose any relevance. Except that Barb loves the thing and keeps it at home writing letters on it until 2019.
I wonder if the carriage on the electronic typewriter moves as you type so you have an idea of how far along the line you are. It's a pretty good way of knowing when you're near the edge of the page, and I imagine it'd be a godsend if you were trying to fill in a form or something with one.
I agree with the theory that the type carriage moves in order to simulate where the recently-typed virtual word would land on the real page.
@@CarletonTorpinjust that. It shows how far along you are and where your character will be
Actually, if you were typing on a form, you can see where you are on the form.
I'll "fifth" that: it's an obvious UI feature... and I think I actually read about it being a thing with normal electronic typewriters too. It would have been almost a requirement for preprinted forms.
I like how the bit about typewriters at the start is nearly the perfect inverse of Technology Connections’ “why typewriters are neat” pitch
Again, I didn't know that I needed an hour documentary on stand-alone word processors, but here I am... friggin awesome - keep these coming!
I love tiny (relative) novel Japanese devices that seem to exist as a terrarium of its own purpose. Like a Swiss army knife of computing. That word processor looked so interesting, it's a shame we couldn't see all of what it could do.
The 640K limit is because the VGA buffer is at 0xA0000, or 640K. 768K would 0xC0000. So there's probably a video buffer at segment:offset 0xC000:0000. Then again it looks like they're register compatible with MDA so maybe they allow writes to the MDA address 0xB000:0000 too.
And as for "how much software would be able to take advantage of this" -- potentially quite a lot. DOS would give your program a limit on how much memory it was allowed to use -- basically, whatever chunk it had free. So if your memory manager could tell DOS to use a larger span of conventional memory, it would then report a larger chunk to the running program, and if that program didn't think too hard about it, it should "just work" up to 1MB.
@@nickwallette6201 Yeah, it would work fine. When you allocate memory in Dos you get a segment:offset value which gives you access to 1MB of memory. There's no problem using memory between 640K and 1MB if is Ram. In fact programs like QEMM386 would use paging to fill all unused address space with Ram via paging and then TSRs, drivers and and Dos could use it.
@@nickwallette6201 plug in another 256K and I bet this could load device drivers and TSRs high into UMA.
I've always wanted one of these things. I'm old, and crappy, and pointless too, so I believe we'd get along famously.
The carriage of the first one probably moves when you type into screen buffer so if you are typing over a form (or making a table), you can align your text to it ... My mom had one like that to specifically to fill in pre-printed government-like forms, even tho we had a computer.
The thing that made me "I want to be near that, I want to be some way involved with that" when I was a kid was those real basic PDAs/organizer things, they were so fascinating as a computer that goes in your pocket, Nowadays even have a few full featured Windows Pocket PCs in my collection of crap, and even those are pretty meh, I remember getting those Zipit z2 things back in like 2010 when they were worthlessly cheap and hacking Linux on them, I played with them for a while then they ended up on the shelf. Once all the individual gadgets like point and shoot cameras, PDAs, MP3 players, etc all got replaced by the modern affordable smartphone they're just pretty, meh, to look back on.
The battery of my poor Z2 had died when I recently had a look at it after many years. It was fun to tinker with back then.
@@0xbenedikt I pulled mine out a few years ago and found Mozzwald was still occaisionally posting about it on CZcams and he was kind enough to upload a z2sidX image that would work with uboot since he'd long remove it from his site. I think I switched the repo to an archive of one of the releases from around 2010-2011ish as pulling pacakges from the modern sid repo would likely break the system since it's so old.
The pda had a lot of potential but you had to connect it to a pc to get software and for some reason it never went smoothly. and you had to pay for everything ofcourse so you usually just ended up using the build in stuff and getting bored quickly .but it seems like i had forgotten how advanced pdas got in the 2000s. because i keep thinking about the ones from the 90s that were not very impressive if you wanted to do more than just basic business things .but in the 2000s they could do almost everything a pc could but with reduced resolution .the smart phone was more convenient because it could connect to the internet without wifi or an addon for 2g or 3g internet .
The carriage moving on the typewriter is to "point to the current position"; the LCD isn't long enough, so an indication of "how much space is left in the line" is needed. It's a type of cursor :)
That also probably explains why the early mouse cursors (Xerox Sparc, Alto) were an upwards pointing arrow.
@@XanthinZardaSome early text cursors were too, if you've ever used any X11 app using the Athena or Openlook frameworks, the cursor is basically just a ^ at the bottom of the line. Some programming frameworks even called it a "caret" for a long time after - the accessibility feature to use it to navigate through the page is still called 'caret browsing' on some web browsers (though the actual cursor is a blinking vertical line)
@@XanthinZardaThat's a caret, also a technical name for a cursor. Variants include ^ and ‸ (proofreader's mark). Firefox has a caret browsing mode to enable cursor navigation.
It makes a lot more sense to me because I used an Olivetti ET 231 electronic typewriter. They seem to have designed the keyboard and functions on this machine to make it easy for people who’ve used their other electronic typewriters and word processors.
Years ago I picked up one of those CRT based Brother word processors because I thought it was neat and did some basic research on it, coming across an blog post or forum thread (I don't quite remember which) talking about how these machines are able to be hacked to run CP/M since they share components with other CP/M machines at the time
This is fun!
The other day I got an Olivetti ETV2900, which is basically the same but in reverse: The PC part is built into the monitor. You have a little 12" paperwhite CRT with two floppy drives mounted under the screen, with only power and keyboard connectors. Then you also have a more or less standard electric typewriter. And yes, the typewriter connects to the PC's keyboard connector. When it's plugged in and the PC turned on, the typewriter works as the PC's keyboard and the PC prints over the same keyboard connector to the typewriter's printing mechanism. Crazy!
oh, that's funky! you don't happen to be anywhere near seattle do you, lmao, I'd love to see how similar it is inside.
@@CathodeRayDude Sorry, I'm in Germany....
But hey, feel free to come pick it up! 😄
Loved the Jamie's comment that is just completely unfounded British slander(we deserve it) with the instance on being wrong
Everyone and his/her dog knows that this whole video leads to playing games on a typewriter. But that was a long time waiting :D
The Rogue connection was so unexpected, one of those happy little accidents!
These dedicated word processors are so neat. After we got a PC our Brother word processor was put in the closet, where I found it eventually. The amber CRT was utterly mesmerizing. Just a warm glow over total darkness. I would roleplay using it, making the computer type out things that a sci-fi computer might say. Anyway I had no idea there were PC compatible word processors like the Olivetti so this video was a pleasant surprise. And an odd video refresh rate was a nice bonus! Thanks for the video and I hope things begin turning for the better for you.
When Tandy was a name to be reckoned with in the computer business they used amber screens and graphic interfaces.
22:24 The PowerMac G4 (and some early G5s as well) actually did use DC to run the monitor if you used an ADC monitor
Pretty sure the Nokia PCs did as well with their LDUs. I'm having some trouble finding references online today.
I thought you said "Word processors are boring"? And yet, I am currently 40 minutes and 40 seconds in and genuinely in awe of what the Olivetti is capable of. I had been around a metric SHIT TON of electric typewriters and word processors up to about the year 2000. My mom did secretary work and office work right up to about 2000 or so, and at one time could type on average 120 words per minute, error free. I have watched her type so fast that she regularly had to stop to let the machine catch up, and she was good enough to continue typing where the machine had run out of buffer with just a quick glance at the page or screen, and then back to typing as if nothing happened, without looking at the page or screen again till the next buffer overrun. She actually worked for an attorney once that would leave before she started typing at the end of the day because her typing was louder and faster than his printer. If she would have had access to something like this, I think her switching to computers would have been smoother in the late 1980s into the 1990s. She wasn't dumb, she picked it all up quickly, she just initially hated the extra steps needed just to type up a document, and she preferred on-the-fly typing over typing on a screen.
Those remind me of the AlphaSmart word processors I had in school because of my hand issues. They were basically a keyboard with a built-in LCD screen. To print anything, you had to plug it in via USB, open Word or Notepad, and when you hit Print on the keyboard it would rapidly type everything that was in the current save slot into the text editor.
I had that WP-75 in my house growing up in the 90s. It was a hand-me-down from my grandfather. Haven't thought about it in probably 20 years-what a blast from the past!
"This'll be a weird one..." Have you watched this channel before? Heh, love it.
Your 60hz/70hz comment suddenly reminded me of a shouting match I got into with my friend who said the flickering screen was driving him crazy and I was 100% convinced he was making it up to make me feel like I was missing something. This is probably also related to why I have never once felt physical symptoms from looking at screens too long while he gets headaches after like six hours
60hz CRTs never bothered me
Watching this, on meds, in pain, in the fog, but having a great time I couldn't help but think about your recent(?) chost on "it can run doom", so obviously I had to start imagining how one would lie to make Doom run on this glorious contraption. The answer is Foom, an adaptation of the first level of Doom into a Text Adventure. Thanks. Loved it when you ejected the floppy.
32:55 Even better, WordPerfect's help key was not F1 but _F3._
For the paper feed on that Olivetti, try pulling the paper bail past the open position. I remember using an IBM wheelwriter that used that method to load the paper
The OLIVETTI BCS3030 was a Desk Style computer where you have to take the back off the desk after removing a few screws and and remove the metal cover of a box to gain access to the PCBs , it also had really strange multi way connectors, It also had 8" duel Floppy Disc drives driven via one motor and a few belts and pulleys, and a bi-directional line printer.
I have an ollivetti electronic tyoewriter that could do bold, albeit it's probably no older than some of those word processors, but it seems to be a common trick, probably borrowed from the mechanical typewriter and the fact that the hammers never quite hit the same place twice.
This video is pretty epic. Several reasons for that, but an early contender is a widescreen CRT (which I am VERY dtf).
I am very interested in how much Olivetti made their keyboards Euro-friendly, allowing US English keyboards to semi-easily type äcçéñte∂ characterß.
The Tandy came with Deskmate which included a word processor. That was part of the sales tactics that made it so popular!
2:01 The carriage is moving so that you can see where the text will go on the paper - very important for the days when you were often using typewriters to fill in pre-printed forms. Back in the day (early to mid-90s) I used a very similar electronic typewriter for job applications, filling out multi-page application forms full of boxes into which you had to write or type. I would routinely photocopy the forms multiple times so that I could use them as draft copies to set the tabs and ensure that everything fitted properly into the boxes before I committed to putting the proper form into the typewriter and letting it run; it had battery-backed memory so that you could store multiple pages as separate files and print a whole page at a time.
Thank you for making this video. The narration is exactly the way I would want to listen to most fact-based documentaries, with a well measured emotional involvement in the topic. It is also a welcome change from too many automated videos using computer speech to read out text, accompanied by mostly stock images from anywhere on the internet or even just sampled from original news stories. I will be returning to this video later, as I started watching this video right before I had to go to bed, but it captured my attention as a pleasant surprise. Thank you again for doing a very good job presenting something interesting about a not very common combination of almost forgotten technology. This piece of technology history is worth knowing about as a precursor to our current shared technology.
If you want another interesting Olivetti innovation, check out the magnetic cards the Programma 101 programmable calculator used.
"whomst amogus" lmfao love you
Interesting machine. "Word Processors" were also extremely popular in the UK, thanks to the Amstrad PCW line of machines. They were about 1/4 the price of an equivalent PC setup at the time, and provided everything you needed to write and print text: a sharp green screen, floppy drive and printer. They were the first computer introduced to millions of homes and businesses. The neat thing about them was that they were actually a quite capable CP/M machine, though long after CP/M was popular (launched in 1985). That meant there developed a huge ecosystem of third party software (business and games) and add-ons. Taking what appeared to be a horribly out of date system and packaging it just right at a low price was hugely successful, and Amstrad's word processor turned out to be an affordable "real computer".
The main issue you had trouble with the signal on a composite monitor is that it's a not a 15khz horizontal sync, it's likely 31khz or higher. This is why you sometimes saw two copies of the image per line, it was trying to sync to every other hsync pulse. As for something to use it on, try any of your trinitron VGA monitors. Every one I've owned secretly supports sync on green, and several non trinitron VGA monitors I have will too. What you've got coming from that machine is essentially "composite monochrome VGA" so if you had a sync stripper to seperate horizontal, vertical, and video, you'd have a completely standard monochrome VGA signal. They likely combined them to reduce wire count. Seperating sync from video isn't hard to do
I'm so excited that you covered word processors! When I was young my mom dispite my constant bugging would never buy a PC it was always word processors. We has ones from xerox, brother, casio, radio shack. The coolest one she had was in form factor very simipar to your Olivetti, it was a Sharp and it had a seperate CRT with amber phos and had two floppy drives. That one had an officially licensed built in port of Tetris! and I loved playing that all the time. Anytime I see an amber phos monitor I'm always instantly hit with a memory of tetris on one.
What did your mom do to buy so many of those? I imagine that most people only bought one and stuck with it - until eventually transitioning to PC.
@@silkwesir1444 My Dad worked from home and she was his "secretary" She went though all those over a period of about 20 years, some were portable and others she just upgraded to newer "better" ones that had more features. She did eventually get a PC but I had to buy it for her. Even as late as 2008 she was still wanting to use a word processor.
I remember using a Brother WP that had a floppy drive and looked a lot like what you showed at the beginning of the video. It had Tetris. Genuine, branded Tetris. A pretty legit version of it as well.
Pure unobtainium now the floppy are just about unreadable in normal desktops for a verity of reasons.
Used to own one of the small Brother word processors, maybe even the model in the video. Absolutely loved that thing. I could type whole documents at any time, even when my housemates were sleeping, and just print later. I could take the ribbon out and type using carbon paper when whatever I was typing wasn't critical. And I was mailing 8-page letters to penpals. Typing unlocked and changed my whole life. True story: I won a TV somewhere and tried very hard to get the prize switched to a typewriter. Didn't work. It was years before I got a PC with a printer. And I can still type faster than anyone I know.
Your summary into why these exist has merit but one of the reasons we kept these around the office in the late 80s and early 90s was to fill out forms. Even though an office may be outfitted with plenty of modern computers, these word processors could do something the PC & printer combo couldn't do. Fill out a form. Forms for governments, both federal and local. Forms for business to business needs. Order requisitions, transportation and permits. A lot of places just had their own form and you had to fill it out. Often times in triplicate. Carbon paper would we loaded into the word processor along with the form to make one or two copies of the same form. I honestly don't recall seeing these in a home setting in any acquaintance's home. Not unless they were maybe a notary.
Super B 13x19 is a thing. It is a thing I love, I rarely print full size drawings anymore at work b/c Super B can hold ~35% scale ARCH E, abit larger for ANSI E, and 50% Arch E1.
A better idea than putting a raspberry pi in them is giving them to me because I am very interested in old word processors, don't have Opinions™️ on keyboard/type slow as shit anyways, and prefer this format of typing over anything modern anyways. I write notes and faux documents. If i want color, i stamp it on or in a header, or image. They work for me, even if they don't work for everyone. I like that there's little interest in them because I can still get them cheap instead of having to compete with shelf-sitters and online resellers to find them.
I'm the same one who bought a portable xerox specifically to use it regularly as its intended to be.
Are you a furry? Awooooo! 🌈
I'd love that orange phosphor unit with the weird wide CRT, i've been hunting one.
@@robertschnobert9090mhm mow mow mow mow
Excellent video - worked for Olivetti UK for many years on all the ET range as well as the ETV and ETS1010/1020. They look dated now but in their day they cornered the market over IBM in Europe and to an extent America (Ed Asner advertised them in the states). The ETV had CP/M installed and you could run simple programs quite well.
You've got a knack for making these weird machines seem very enduring. Great video!
If you want graphics and all that jazz in a word processor, you should check out the Canon Starwriter 30. I think the Jet 300 and such could do them too, most of the Starwriter models with the large LCD screen could.
That Smith Corona hit my kind of aesthetic enough that I'm now seriously considering trying to roughly replicate it in modern form via an unholy fusion of one of my old laptops with my laser printer. On the plus side, that would make it a lot easier to set it up as a print server, but on the minus side, I'm pretty sure that would be worse than a separate laptop and laser printer in virtually every other way.
Depends on your feelings with CUPS or other printing protocols.
Ah. Typewriters.
I remember using one to type school assignments back in the day. Computers were around, (I’m not *that* old), but my family didn’t own one until Christmas ‘92. And the typewriter I was using was primitive compared to the ones shown in this video.. electric, but with no LCD screen (it did have a correcting ribbon, which could delete either single characters or entire words.. so it did have some degree of smarts built in).
I don’t miss them. Not in the least.
As someone with a collection of 4 electronic typewriters and a Selectric II, I love these things, and I would absolutely snap up that Olivetti. I've always kind of wanted to do my school work on one of my typewriters, but I always get caught up by a lack of some formatting tool I need. This would be awesome for that. The only thing I can really see being a problem with it is that the monitor you're doing most of your work on is off to the side, so you always have to look off-axis.
Dude you’re excellent. Existing within society is such a struggle that my tolerance for devices and systems that fucking suck is zero, so it’s awesome that you’ve created a reality where you have the space to think about and articulate exactly why it’s not necessary for things to be designed or executed badly. Your videos are like properly executed versions of the arguments with people I have in my head after failing in reality to make them understand that whatever random technological encumbrance is a stupid waste of time (and instead making myself appear to them as a whining, stupid non-team player). So instead of trying and failing to engage with people on these subjects I’m just going leave my headphones on and tell them “go watch CRD on CZcams”. Then I’ll walk away to somewhere that doesn’t have people.
Today i learned that the Gr in Alt Gr stands for "graph"
Yep, it's literally "Alternate Graphics", because at the time it was introduced, which I believe was actually on the original PC, IBM referred to characters as graphics, which they very much are in a literal sense.
@@CathodeRayDude I always guessed it was "grande" because I've mainly seen it on Canadian multilingual and french keyboards, and it's kinda like shift, which makes things big. Grande.
Sorry to hear you’re having a hard time man. Take it ez and all the best for ‘24.
Always find your storytelling engaging. The CC licence at the end touched me. I hope you feel the love we viewers have for you and your work. Thank you.
Olivetti did design. They hired Carlo Scarpa to make their showroom in Venice. It's also a bit overkill
My Aunt had a Sharp one back in the 90s, I asked her why she got it and she thinks it was because it was a cheap lotus compatible word processor with a printer that was relatively small for the flat she lived in.
I knew of it back then but was surprised it ran DOS when I looked at the boot floppy a couple of years ago, sadly I couldn't buy it from her before she got rid of it long after getting a 'normal' desktop computer.
I'm tempted to pick one up some day if I can find one with serial connectivity to use as a Linux console for the LOLs.
"I want to be near that for no reason." That hit a bit too hard, haha. Great video as always, Gravis!
A few thoughts from someone inexplicably interested in these things:
- Some Brother word processors (including I think the one you have) originally came with a Tetris disk, and in general a lot of the consumer ones were intended as low-cost computer alternatives which explains why they'd include things like this. I have a Canon "desktop publisher" from the mid-90s based around an inkjet printer, and it comes with a clip art and games disk with Solitaire, Minesweeper, and a slot machine.
- They're not easy to find, but some WPs and electronic typewriters can do proportionally spaced fonts; one of those with a decent ribbon can product output that is (IMO) just as good as a laser printer. Some dedicated daisy-wheel printers even have a graphics mode that lets you move the carriage and paper in very precise increments and use the period and such to make basic graphics. Some of the Diablo printwheels I have even have a metal period solely to make it wear out more slowly when (ab)used for graphics.
- The UX on most of these consumer WPs is poor, although Panasonic ones actually seem to handle things a bit better than the ones you showed in the video. I don't recall ever having issues with input lag or dropped keystrokes on mine (although the godawful keyboard balances things out) and it's also got a key combo to invert the display at any time which is a nice bonus.
- The Olivetti-AT&T partnership is somewhat interesting, it was during a time when a lot of companies were branching out into office equipment for some reason, including Exxon (there was an Exxon-branded electronic typewriter, not kidding). I've got an AT&T-branded typewriter that's obviously a rebadged Olivetti and it's interesting since it's got a module system, I somehow managed to find the serial terminal module for it (and mine came with a spellchecker) but the typewriter quit working the day after I got it and I still can't figure out how to get it open non-destructively.
- For loading sheets of paper, did you try pulling the paper bail forwards? Quite a few electronic typewriters have a system where pulling either the lever for the paper bail or the bail itself will feed in enough paper for a comfortable top margin.
- The print mechanism in this device is kind of interesting since the design of the hammer screams late 80s/early 90s cheapo garbage 10 char/sec but it can clearly go quite a bit faster than that. I can't tell if yours can do it, but some Olivetti mechanisms also have a reader for metallic barcodes on some printwheels that encode details about pitch, character set, etc. so it can be automatically configured.
- I'd be somewhat curious what escape codes are being used for the virtual printer for things like bold, underline, etc; something Diablo-like would be my guess since they clearly had some interest in compatibility with regular PC programs but because Olivetti is Olivetti I could also see them going with something entirely custom.
- If for whatever reason you want more printwheels for this contraption, I got several duplicates with my AT&T/Olivetti typewriter that are compatible.
I kinda wonder if there were purchasing requirements at some companies that everything be able to run Wordstar or Word Perfect version x.yy
It would then make sense to build something like this so that even if that feature wasn't used in the end you could at least get your foot in the door.
Also having one Application and one TSR probably helped reduce software costs, shame all the savings went to VLSI.
those were my dream machines. even saw the right one in an Urbex location. but the rule is "only take picture, just leave footprints"
Well, if a thing just rots somewhere it's at least morally okay to take it, right? I know legally on paper it's not allowed... 🌈
@@robertschnobert9090 no, one does not take it away, even if it's there sitting to rott, since other will need it to take photos in the coming years. otherwise otherwise noone will be able to take pictures eg CRTs covered in moss.
You really do have to love this guys channel and content.. Brilliant.
2:30 - This should've been marketed as an 'ultra-wide-screen' laptop!
I had a dream about a machine like this a couple days ago.. crazy how the world works 😂
I did a double-take when you showed the Brother word processor. I went off to college in 1982, when PCs, for the most part, didn't do a whole lot for us. (For example, our Apple ][ Plus had a word processing program, but when I was in high school, our Apple did not yet have an 80-column card, and our printer was a 40-column thermal printer, and I only had one teacher who would accept assignments on a 4-inch wide scroll of thermal paper in all caps that weren't anywhere near what was then known as "letter quality".) So my college composition machine was an electric typewriter. The next brother in line, though, graduated high school a year later, when these word processing typewriters came down in price, so he went to school with a Brother daisy-wheel model very much like the one you showed, if not the exact same one. I'm not surprised that your Olivetti still works. My brother's Brother survived a rollover car accident in which the typewriter got banged around the inside of the car before being ejected out of what was left of the back window. (The bigger miracle was that he and I walked away from that one with barely a scratch apiece.) He plugged it in when he got it home, and it fired up and worked without a hitch. I don't think it lasted him through college, but that was probably only due to hidden damage from the accident. My point is that those things were built to last even if they were toted and banged around a lot.
Awesome video! Reminds me of a thing called the Wang Office Assistant that my parents had years ago. Was super old back then and I used it for homework - would love to see a vid on that!
"Is there anything here you WANT to see?"
Yes, the last 20 minutes. Why do you think we're subscribed to your channel? If we didn't find this stuff interesting, we wouldn't be here. Chin up, buddy. Just dig this shit out of your shelves and go ham. I don't think you can fuck this up as long as you're trying.
I used the Z80 CP/M version of the Olivetti typewriter in 1995: they were built like a tank, so it's possible that people used them for a lot of time. On the othe hand Olivetti sold electronic typewriters but with a serial port in the late '80s: basivally they worked like teletypes, had an online/offline button. I remember I've seen in an office an Olivetti M24 with both a typewriter and a 9 pin printer connected. I suppose because a the time the print quality of a dot matrix printer was so and so.
I'm a Rhode Islander and was surprised to see your test document for filling out a form using the basic typewriter functionality was for our local DEM lol. Love your videos, keep up the good work!
I love the teardown sections of your videos when you include them
Man, this is one of the most enjoyable videos about a technology I've seen lately.
Another banger! I love your videos man keep up the good work.
I love your hour long videos, they're always quite interesting! You also have a very nice voice for it
Man, seeing that brought back a lot of happy memories. My parents had one of those Olivetti's and I remember doing a number of reports for 4th and 5th grade on it as a kid. thank you for sharing and the trip down memory lane.
Why did I just watch a 90 minute video about word processors? Oh right because CRD has a way with words and technical details that make me unable to turn his videos off. Keep up the good work, my dude!
CRD videos are always a nice surprise. i love that you don't cover 'filler' stuff, every video is a hit. keep up the good work!
This is an amazing video. Well done ... thanks for that bit of computer history. Would love to hear your take on the Amstrad PCW 8256/8512
I have that exact same Brother Typewriter, the video freaked me out for a sec since mine also has the stickers left on and a missing cover lol. Love how this video accurately portrays how absurdly creaky handling these things are.
Also, to mention it on re-watch, the Brother Typewriter also has a bold feature.
FWIW, in my first job out of college, I wrote the Conversion Calculator and the electronic Elements of Style for the Brother typewriters. I had a C compiler on a PC that I could put the executable on a floppy and test it in the typewriter.
In the wild, I have only ever seen the software mentioned on the side of the box as an option, and never an actual disk... so yeah, even then, programming on them was pretty much a waste of time.
Oh wow, that's wild. Yeah, I have to wonder if the whole idea of addon applications was sort of a hail-mary attempt by these companies to sway people away from PCs that didn't really pan out.
“You were expected to devour the entire manual before even opening the app” - I feel that way about most software on iOS and Android. At least now there’s Google search.
I also have a thing for Olivetti, one of my favorite machines in my collection is my Olivetti Multimedia PCS 42P AMD486 system which was a gift from a friend who has now passed. Thanks for the great video.
Love your videos!! Thank you!
On the chips: NEC chips that start with 'd' actually can be found by replacing that with 'upd'. For instance, 'upd78220' brings up a pdf indicating it's an 8-bit 12MHz microcontroller, probaby for driving the printer.