Hi folks, It's my first post but I am not new to the M100. I've refurbished two or three via recapping and they are great little machines. I was recently intrigued by and acquired an Olivetti M10 with PicDisc drive from someone on eBay who got it from an estate sale. They have no idea how it works AND there's no documentation, of course. It would not power on for them but I expected that.
I've since received it and taken it apart and the M10 works fine. Caps all look fine but I had to remove the battery as there was some corrosion but not much. It pops up a PicDisc battery warning and then shuts down immediately. Makes sense, I guess. I am waiting for a new 12 volt rechargeable lead acid battery to arrive. I'm surprised there was one that small but at 1.2ah, it's supposed to last for 20 hours on a single charge with normal use. In case anyone is wondering, it uses the same Teac FD-35E 3.5" single sided drive mechanism as the Chipmunk drive that Hey Birt! had in the drive he restored recently. I think I'll chance firing it up as is. First off, I would love to hear from anyone that has had experience with a PicDisc. I think I may have a CP/M disk or two that might work as the PicDisk boots up CP/M 2.2 from what I've read. I haven't gotten up to powering it up yet but I have already archived the disks I think might work with it. Initially it also came with a bunch of MS-DOS disks that don't seem to be related at all and nothing screams "PicDisc" expect for one or two single sided double density 3.5" diskettes with hand written labels. I was going to play with the PicDisc this morning with the dead battery installed as there is a barrel jack on the PicDisc unit but no markings as to what voltage. I might guess 12VDC because to the recharging needed but there is a mystery barrel plugged wire that is hand-soldered to the M10 battery terminals that was just coiled up near the PicDisc barrel jack. It fits the barrel jack of the PicDisk and would be 6VDC (battery compartment voltage on the M10). Because of this, it makes me pause as to what voltage is needed on the PicDisc so for now I wait for the battery. That should make it work as it will come fully charged. The board in the PicDisc has 32K of static RAM on it along with a bunch of other electronics so I don't want to fry anything accidently with the wrong voltage. If anyone has any experience with the PicDisc, I'd love to fine any software, documentation to even just your experience with it and what that input voltage should be on the PicDisc because, of course, it did not come with an adapter. With the 12VDC battery recharging needed, I am just not sure. I've only been able to find ads, a comparison article of the Chipmunk drive VS the PicDisc and one post that talked about 22Disk settings for the format used by the PicDisc so I am hoping to find someone who might have had one. Any help or feedback is much appreciated. Let's hope I can get this PicDisc working like it used to. Santo Nucifora https://vintagecomputer.ca
