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Devine Lu Linvega

This program emulates on a PC most of the functionality of the Programma 101, a programmable desktop calculator marketed by Olivetti in the late '60's.

ub.fnwi.uva.nl/computermuseum/

Worker using the Olivetti Programma 101
13 comments
Devine Lu Linvega

Everything about this computer is oozing in modernism.

bitzero

@neauoire Ages ago, I had two Olivetti 286 PCs I still remember for their designs. Even if they were the most basic models. Old Olivetti stuff was designed, among others, by Sottssass

Devine Lu Linvega

@bitzero Oh cool, I had no idea! That explains a lot.

bitzero

@neauoire Olivetti M20. Just an example. 1982.

Olivetti M20 personal computer
Andrew C.A. Elliott

@neauoire

My second computer was an Olivetti. (After my Apple ][ ).

I loved that Italian machine :0140:

Devine Lu Linvega

Instructions remind me of the CARDIAC, very much hands-on.

Ubuntu Peronista

@neauoire The Programma 101! It was the first desktop computer in Argentina (a couple of machines used in the astronomical studies in Cordoba and La Plata).

ghostdancer

@neauoire There's a documentary about that machine, considered to be the first desktop pc: Programma 101 - The machine that changed the world.

Ed Davies

@neauoire split, clear, print.

If you pressed those keys in that order the print head would zip across to the right hand side and hammer against the stop there. If you didn't turn the machine off within a few seconds something internal (fuse or transistor or whatever) burned out and you had to get the engineer out for a repair.

We had one of those machines at school [¹] - shared with another nearby school on an alternate terms basis. We wrote a 'real-time' lunar-lander game [²] for it which took a team of three to run: an operator typing commands into the machine and reading out the results, a plotter putting dots on a graph with the read-out co-ordinates and the “pilot” calling out the actions to take. The game was to burn the least fuel landing.

[¹] In the English sense of the word - pre-college or university.

[²] This was pretty soon after Apollo landings, about the time of the Apollo-Soyuz test program.

@neauoire split, clear, print.

If you pressed those keys in that order the print head would zip across to the right hand side and hammer against the stop there. If you didn't turn the machine off within a few seconds something internal (fuse or transistor or whatever) burned out and you had to get the engineer out for a repair.

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