The Olivetti Quaderno is a portable computer produced by the Italian Olivetti in 1992. Compared to the contemporary machines, it was characterized by its extremely reduced weight and size. It weighed in fact about a kilo, and was about as large as an A5 sheet except for its thickness. Another peculiar feature of the Quaderno was the possibility, thanks to a built-in microphone and speakers, that it could be used as a recorder. Thanks to the recording, playback and stop buttons on the outside of the body, it was possible to use this feature even when the computer was closed.
Insights - Fun facts
Despite its small size, Quaderno has a 94 keys alphanumeric keyboard, 10 function keys, 4 cursor keys, and a numeric keypad. As pointing device, it is equipped with a trackball in a plastic structure. It is also equipped with a 14x10.5 cm LCD display which is not backlit and is compatible with the standard DCGA, extension of the IBM CGA standard introduced by Olivetti M24.
Il Quaderno poteva essere alimentato mediante 6 batterie di tipo AA, oppure mediante una batteria Nichel-Cadmio da 7.2V.
The Quaderno project was curated by Ugo Carena and Alessandro Santalucia, while the design by Mario Bellini and Hagai Shvadron.
As a user, the Quaderno was aimed primarily at professional users who are often traveling with continuous personal productivity and communication needs.
In this regard very useful are the software installed as standard in the computer: Notepad, Calculator, Address Book, Agenda, Calendar, file transfer software, Voice mgr, File Manager Because of the limited capacity of the processor, it was not possible to record or play audio while another application was run. To overcome these limitations, in 1993 the Olivetti Quaderno 33 was introduced, an evolution of the Quaderno based on an Intel 80C386SX 20 MHz processor. In addition to the new processor, Quaderno 33 has a backlit VGA LCD display and has Windows 3.1 installed as standard before very successful version of the operating system based on graphic interface produced by Microsoft.
Technical Data Sheet
Name of the asset: Olivetti Quaderno (modello PT-XT20)
Category: laptop
Manufacturer: Olivetti
Country of production: Italy (design), Japan (production)
Year of production: 1992
Dimensions: 210x148x32 mm
Weight: 1050 g
Processor: NEC V30HL 16 MHz (Intel 8086 compatible)
Memory Unit: 1 MB
Hard disk: 20 MB + 512 KB ROM
Floppy disk driver: external 1.44 MB 3.5" optional
Display: LCD DCGA 640×400 punti 8 toni di grigio non retroilluminato
Ports: parallel Centronics (non-standard connector), RS232 serial (non-standard connector), microphone, headphones
Other: built-in speakers and microphone, PCMCIA expansion slot
Operating system: MS-DOS 5.0
