Olivetti M19
The Olivetti M19 is a personal computer made in 1986 by the Italian company Olivetti. It had an 8088 at 4.77 or 8 MHz and 256–640 KB of RAM. The BIOS was Revision Diagnostics 3.71. In the UK it was sold as Acorn M19.[1]
The M19 was shipped to South Africa with two floppy disk drives (360 KB format). A hard Ddive option was made available later, which was a 5 MB hard drive in an add-on case (later 10 MB hard drive) attached to the LHS of the computer via four machine screws.
Paul Maynes, a technician at one of Olivetti's dealerships in Durban, South Africa, HBH Computers, designed a bus extension card with a 90-degree bend, that could accommodate a Seagate 20 MB full height hard drive controller card (later 40 MB). This was a world first. The second floppy drive was removed and the hard drive was installed in the vacant bay. The bus converter was manufactured by SA Signals Manufacturing in Durban, South Africa. The project coordinator for manufacture was Janet van Niekerk. Steven Beukes of Micro Distributors, Seagate's South African distributors at the time, provided the equipment for the first prototype.