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Comment by wenc | Hacker News Reader

I remember Olivetti PCs from the late 80s to 90s. They were beautifully designed -- not SGI or Sun beautiful -- but beautiful for PCs. I like the "grate" design.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325569104545

The IBM PS/2 Model 30 was also quite beautiful

https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/56...

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I worked at Olivetti's Advanced Technology Labs in Cupertino until 1989. We were really making some wonderful stuff then, but the company itself was having trouble, and some scandals. The executive staff were always being arrested for one thing or another (see https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/03/world/accused-olivetti-ch... for example).

We paid more attention to cases, fasteners, and design than most other clone vendors.

I left out of frustration and joined a little company that put a stack-based programming language inside laser printers.

Did you edit with `jet` by any chance?

Lagniappe: https://www.scaruffi.com/history/long.html

would you say it's more like lisp or more like forth? this has been a topic of argument

It's more like forth if I had to pick one. Though it is very lispy -- you can pass functions as objects, etc.

I was quite good at programming in it back in the day.

you may enjoy my friend nathan's http://postscriptcode.com/

he says it's more like forth, i disagree

Started on an AT&T 6300 (Olivetti M24) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_M24#/media/File:Vinta...

Oh, the memories! Great thing was the keyboard, gave the user certain assurance and stability, not sure how would I explain it but those of you who used these, would instantly know what I mean.

The keyboard on the AT&T 6300 looks different to that for the Olivetti M24, just comparing the pictures on the wikipedia page.

I had an M24, with the original design of Logitech mouse that plugged into the keyboard.

I have an M24 too, and what I find interesting is that there are different keyboard designs for the Italian layout, including one with the “typewriter” letter layout (with “m” being at the end of the home row) and the 00 key in the numpad, in addition to the 0.

The keyboard with the strongest psychological boost I've ever experienced is the M0116 Apple Standard Keyboard https://deskthority.net/wiki/Apple_Standard_Keyboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY7XXo5uEZI with its old ALPS (Orange, or sometimes Salmon) switches. Every time you press a few keys the little voice in your head tells you (accurately or not!) "Yes, I have accomplished something meaningful. Significant work is being done here." It's really quite self-defeating that Apple can't find the pocket change necessary to bring back Apple keyboards with early ALPS switches, especially now that it's relatively serious about desktop computing again. Things could be a lot worse though: seven years after introducing the M0116 Apple put out the M2980 Apple "Design" "Keyboard" https://deskthority.net/wiki/AppleDesign_Keyboard which could leave you pining for death.

My first PC was an Olivetti Prodest PC1, and it felt a natural design back then coming from the "wedge" design of the 8 and 16 bit machines of the time, as in "the computer is the keyboard".

http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/prodestpc1.html

I appreciate now how different the design was!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166770231506?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid...

My favorite comes from before the PC era:

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/176082135417

The IBM PS/1 was the machine I coveted for its beauty, but it was overpriced and underspecced when I could finally think about one; so a generic beige 386-40 it was.

Yes, Olivetti PCs frequently looked nice. The sting in the tail was incompatibility with third-party components, combined with high prices.

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