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Olivetti M24
The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU.
The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel/Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as the AT&T PC 6300 and the Xerox 6060 series, respectively. (AT&T owned 25% of Olivetti around this time.) The AT&T 6300, launched in June 1984, was AT&T's first attempt to compete in the PC compatible market.
It was also available in France as the PERSONA 1600, built by LogAbax.
The initial 1984 US version named AT&T 6300 came with either one or two 360 KB 5.25" floppy drives; a hard disk was not offered.
In Europe, Olivetti launched a 10 MHz version: the Olivetti M24 SP, announced in November 1985, a contender for the title of "highest clocked 8086 computer" as its processor was the fastest grade of 8086-2, rated for a maximum speed of exactly the same 10 MHz. To support this, the motherboard now featured a switchable 24/30 MHz master crystal, still divided by 3 to produce the 33% duty CPU clock, with an additional 4 MHz crystal to maintain that clock signal for peripherals that required it, and the video board receiving its own 24 MHz crystal to maintain the same image size and scan frequencies at both processor speeds.
In October 1985, AT&T launched the 6300 Plus that used a 6 MHz 286 microprocessor in the same case as the 6300. Prior to release, this machine had been referred to as the 8300 and codenamed "Safari 5" (PC 7300 was "Safari 4"). On the hardware level, this machine was criticized by an InfoWorld reviewer for being incompatible with AT cards. On the other hand, AT&T sold a package of the 6300 Plus bundled with Simultask, which ran MS-DOS and UNIX System V simultaneously, at a cost—with all software licenses included—on par with the IBM PC/AT with MS-DOS alone. A review in PC Magazine declared that AT&T's 6300 Plus was "flat out the better machine" compared to the IBM PC/AT.
The version of Simultask included with the 6300 Plus was based on Locus Computing Corporation's Merge software. In order to allow MS-DOS applications to run as "concurrent UNIX tasks", a non-standard hardware unit known as OS Merge was provided, allowing DOS applications to "think" that they had "complete control over the system" and offering "almost complete compatibility with IBM PC software", with a reported performance penalty when running applications such as Microsoft Flight Simulator of around 15 percent. Such additional hardware was necessary to support these virtualisation features due to the limitations of the 80286. The PC 6300 Plus shipped with MS-DOS in 1985 though, because its Unix System V distribution would not be ready until the end of March 1986. The 6300 Plus did not sell as well as the original 6300. Forrester Research estimated in December 1986 that AT&T's financial losses in PC market were about $600M for the year.
In 1986, AT&T began offering 3.5" 720 KB floppies and 20 MB hard disks. The Xerox 6060 came standard with a single 360 KB 5.25" drive and a 20 MB hard drive. An Iomega Bernoulli 10/10 removable cartridge drive was also offered as a factory option, as well as a "small expansion" sidecar hosting a hard drive for users who found themselves with no internal space left between floppies and expansion cards.
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Olivetti M24
The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU.
The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel/Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as the AT&T PC 6300 and the Xerox 6060 series, respectively. (AT&T owned 25% of Olivetti around this time.) The AT&T 6300, launched in June 1984, was AT&T's first attempt to compete in the PC compatible market.
It was also available in France as the PERSONA 1600, built by LogAbax.
The initial 1984 US version named AT&T 6300 came with either one or two 360 KB 5.25" floppy drives; a hard disk was not offered.
In Europe, Olivetti launched a 10 MHz version: the Olivetti M24 SP, announced in November 1985, a contender for the title of "highest clocked 8086 computer" as its processor was the fastest grade of 8086-2, rated for a maximum speed of exactly the same 10 MHz. To support this, the motherboard now featured a switchable 24/30 MHz master crystal, still divided by 3 to produce the 33% duty CPU clock, with an additional 4 MHz crystal to maintain that clock signal for peripherals that required it, and the video board receiving its own 24 MHz crystal to maintain the same image size and scan frequencies at both processor speeds.
In October 1985, AT&T launched the 6300 Plus that used a 6 MHz 286 microprocessor in the same case as the 6300. Prior to release, this machine had been referred to as the 8300 and codenamed "Safari 5" (PC 7300 was "Safari 4"). On the hardware level, this machine was criticized by an InfoWorld reviewer for being incompatible with AT cards. On the other hand, AT&T sold a package of the 6300 Plus bundled with Simultask, which ran MS-DOS and UNIX System V simultaneously, at a cost—with all software licenses included—on par with the IBM PC/AT with MS-DOS alone. A review in PC Magazine declared that AT&T's 6300 Plus was "flat out the better machine" compared to the IBM PC/AT.
The version of Simultask included with the 6300 Plus was based on Locus Computing Corporation's Merge software. In order to allow MS-DOS applications to run as "concurrent UNIX tasks", a non-standard hardware unit known as OS Merge was provided, allowing DOS applications to "think" that they had "complete control over the system" and offering "almost complete compatibility with IBM PC software", with a reported performance penalty when running applications such as Microsoft Flight Simulator of around 15 percent. Such additional hardware was necessary to support these virtualisation features due to the limitations of the 80286. The PC 6300 Plus shipped with MS-DOS in 1985 though, because its Unix System V distribution would not be ready until the end of March 1986. The 6300 Plus did not sell as well as the original 6300. Forrester Research estimated in December 1986 that AT&T's financial losses in PC market were about $600M for the year.
In 1986, AT&T began offering 3.5" 720 KB floppies and 20 MB hard disks. The Xerox 6060 came standard with a single 360 KB 5.25" drive and a 20 MB hard drive. An Iomega Bernoulli 10/10 removable cartridge drive was also offered as a factory option, as well as a "small expansion" sidecar hosting a hard drive for users who found themselves with no internal space left between floppies and expansion cards.