On Sun, 3 Oct 1999 19:25:40 -0400 (EDT), Bill Yakowenko said:
>What makes you think it is a 6286EL? I know next to nothing
>about these AT&T boxes, so I never would have guessed anything
>besides what it says on the label. Is it just because it's a
>286 box? It quite definitely says "6300 PLUS" on the machine
>itself and on all of the floppies that I got with it.
I have been reading this 6300 discussion for a while, but I still don't
know which computer exactly this is. I know the Italian firm Olivetti
built the 6300 series for AT&T, just like they built a number of DECpc's
for Digital. I only know the original Olivetti's, and can't determine
which Olivetti hides behind the 6300 label. The standard 286 Olivetti
clone systems I have used, always complained about a parity error if there
was RAM memory removed from the system and this was not updated in the
cmos setup. The machine would count through the memory that was there and
generate the error when it fell off the end. Updating the cmos or adding
memory might work. If your 6300 is a 8086 or 8088 then it will not be a
standard clone, Olivetti did things their own way in those days and you
will really need a manual (which I don't have, the first Olivetti's I met
were the 286's).
If it is a 286 Olivetti, then there is no key sequence to get into the
bios setup screen. You need a setup floppy. Some 286 Olivetti's do have
an rudimentary internal setup program, but that only comes up when there
is a problem. To get into that setup I used to unplug the floppy drive
power cable. Even for the 486 Olivetti's a setup floppy was always needed
to get at all the bios setup options. This has always been quite a pain,
since there is no universal Olivetti setup program, each machine has its own.
The exchange program between AT&T and Olivetti also worked the other way
around. I have a 3B2/400 Unix system in my collection (in a part of the
Computer Home I haven't photographed yet, so no picture, sorry) that has
the Olivetti label on it. I don't dare to use it because I don't know the
password, and I do not have any floppies or tapes with the Unix OS for it,
so messing it up would be unrepairable. Besides, AT&T wants a great deal of
money for the maintenance floppies. This machine will alwas have a special
place in my collection though, since it is so heavy I sprained a muscle in my
back while lifting it so bad that I needed several weeks of therapy to cure.
One of the hazards of the old computer collector...
Kees.
--
Kees Stravers - Geldrop, The Netherlands - kees.stravers_at_iae.nl
http://www.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/ my Computer Home page
http://www.vaxarchive.org/ documentation on old VAX systems
http://vaxarchive.sevensages.org/ VAXarchive mirror
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Received on Wed Oct 06 1999 - 04:24:10 BST