The fifth BluMach alpha, 0.1.0-alpha.5, is out. Almost everything new is Olivetti and from the early nineties: the M300 series, the PCS machines released at the end of 1992 and an M290 SP that took a lot more work than expected.
Like the previous ones, it’s experimental. A machine that boots isn’t necessarily a machine that works well, and each machine’s page notes what I’ve tested and what I haven’t.
Before you download: BluMach does not include ROMs, BIOS files or operating systems. You’ll have to obtain them yourself; they are not distributed with the program.
New machines
- M300 series: the M300 with the IF378 board, the M300-02, M300-02F, M300-08 and M300-15, all with a 386SX, and the M300-30 and M300-30P, with a 486.
- PCS 11 and PCS 33, the second PCS series, which Olivetti introduced in November 1992 with MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0 preinstalled. They share the BA013 board with the M300-02 and M300-02F, which were the professional models.
- PCS 46/C, with a 486DX2 at 50 MHz and integrated Cirrus Logic video.
- M290 SP, a 286 at 20 MHz with a VLSI TOPCAT chipset and integrated VGA. That’s what the BIOS I have calls itself. Its components match the BA-08 board of the M290-25 described in Olivetti’s service guide, but I haven’t yet found any document linking the two names.
With this, practically all of this summer’s machines have been added. I’ll take some time to debug them, and if new machines arrive it will be at a slower pace.
What came up while getting them running
- Disks that took a while to appear. On the PCS 33 and the M300-02F the hard disk took 10 to 15 seconds to become available. After asking the disk what it is, the BIOS sends one more command (READ BUFFER) that the emulation didn’t accept, and it waited until it timed out. Now the command is accepted and the disk appears straight away.
- The front panel key. The M300-02 and M300-02F have a lock on the front, and the BIOS asks the keyboard controller whether it’s locked. It now answers no.
- M300 with IF378 and M300-30. The first sizes its memory through its Intel 82335 chipset, and the second reads a board register with its configuration and bus speed. Both were missing.
- M290 SP. At first it stayed black, with no video. The BIOS checks three things before turning on the display: that a timer counts at the expected speed, that memory refresh works, and a board line it reads through the keyboard controller. Once that was solved, it restarted on its own when it reached the extended memory test. The chipset model assumed a single memory bank, and the BA-08 has two soldered 512 KB banks plus the SIMM sockets on the expansion card. With that layout it completes the diagnostics and boots MS-DOS from the hard disk.
The machines in this batch are created with the interpreter instead of the dynamic recompiler. For computers of this speed the interpreter is enough.
Catalogue
The PCS 46/C was in a subfamily of its own and didn’t appear in the collection. It’s now in the PCS family with the others. The PCS table shows the year and whether each model has a page, like the other families’ tables, and adds the PCS 286 S and the PCS 44, the latter as a historical reference, with no page. I also went over every family’s table so they say the same as the machine pages.
Four machines in development
The M250, M250 E, M280 and PCS 11 carry a notice that I’m working on them. They can be created like the rest, but they may fail or stop halfway. I’d rather they could be tried than hide them: if someone runs them, even if they don’t get anywhere, the result helps me finish them.
What has been checked and what hasn’t
“Checked” means I’ve seen it work myself with the original BIOS, not that the emulation is exact.
| Machine | Checked | Pending |
|---|---|---|
| M300-02F and PCS 33 | POST, IDE disk detection and boot | Other memory sizes and more software |
| M300-08 and M300-15 | POST and MS-DOS 3.30a boot from floppy and from an IDE disk in AUTO mode | More software |
| M300-02 | POST and boot from floppy | Hard disk |
| PCS 46/C | POST, integrated video and MS-DOS from floppy | Hard disk, other memory sizes and the Setup, which can't be opened from the keyboard |
| M290 SP | Full diagnostics and MS-DOS from the hard disk | Extended Setup and memory sizes from 3 to 17 MB |
| M250, M250 E, M280 and PCS 11 | Nothing yet with this release | POST, Setup and DOS boot |
Download
The release is on the alpha.5 page on GitHub, for 64-bit Windows only. Unzip it into a new folder and open BluMach.exe. The release guide explains the installation, the firmware each machine asks for and the known limitations.
If something fails, open an issue on GitHub with the version, the machine, the BIOS, the memory, the disk and the steps to reproduce it.