Couple things I'd like to address:

1) "Why is it just MDA?"
It isn't. I was wrong, and I'm doing some testing to figure out what the machine is actually capable of. It can at least do CGA, and might even have some kind of half baked EGA support. I don't know how my initial testing failed to catch this.

2) "Why did Olivetti design it this way?"
Olivetti was actually a pretty significant name in computing in the 80s, and among other things, they produced some very early PC clones. They also owned a chunk of VLSI, and were apparently heavily involved in designing custom PC chipsets.

That got me thinking: it's very possible that they developed this custom MDA-like chip four or five years prior, circa 83 or 84 when it made a lot more sense to stick with plain MDA. Then when the ETV2700 came along, they just reused the work they'd already done, since it didn't cost anything. I haven't yet found proof of this, but it makes sense.

3) "Can it run Doom?"
I have to be honest, I find this joke a bit old and tired, but to answer the question, no, it can't, and it never will. Most versions of Doom are incapable of running on anything less than a 386. FastDoom is a recent project that can run on a 286, but this machine is 8086-class.

There is 8088Doom, but it's in a very early stage of development, and only works if you have a hard drive. It also can't output to an MDA display. FastDoom does have an MDA mode, which could maybe be integrated into 8088Doom, but honestly it's just not any fun to play that way. There are other games I would MUCH rather see. If I'd been thinking, I might have fired up ZZT, and if I wanted to see someone put in a ton of effort for a stunt, I'd rather see something like Commander Keen, which would be a lot more playable in textmode.

“I want to be near that for no practical reason” perfectly describes how I feel about 99% of the things that catch my attention at RE-PC lol

Sorry Gravis, if you were trying to bore us with typewriters, you dramatically failed. This was a fantastic, interesting video, and yes, I’m still loving these weird beasts with their terrible user experiences. Your videos are always a great watch.

Assuming SWP was named under the same logic as SWS -- Secretary Work Station -- I would assume it's short for Secretary Word Processor.

My partner wanted to tell you that the reason it was super expensive and the custom programmes were so slick is because it was marketed to lawyers, who always base their purchasing on what sounds the most expensive and custom. (They're a soon-to-be former lawyer)

Our shipping department still has an electronic typewriter in the cupboard, as they sometimes need it to fill out shipping papers that use a carbon copy (since other printing technologies are not able to imprint the character through the carbon paper onto the second sheet). So they still have some niche uses, whereas the "newer" word processor is completely obsolete.

I was  a kid for whom writing with a pen never worked. At all. Doctor genes. My elementary school threw one of these at me and I immediately became way better at all the written things.  So grateful that these were available in the market. No internet on them to distract. Just a word processor that processed words.

I was one of the folks who enjoyed this video.  I had a buddy who's dad owned a typewriter business in the 80s. They began dabbling in computers as well, and had several of the hybrid style computer-typewriters frankenputers alongside Commodores, Ataris and Olivetti PCs.. We had a lot of fun discovering what they could, and more often, could not do. Then we went home to my C64 and his Atari 800. But to set a little context, imagine a law office with Barb in reception. Barb has been using typewriters for 40 years and is going to resist change. If you throw a PC on her desk, Barb will freeze up. If you throw down a typewriter with some delay in typing and a little bit of correction capability, Barb will likely adapt. Everyone likes Barb, so Barb will get into the 1980's one step at a time.The next kid you hire will likely have seen and played with a Pet 2001 or an Apple II in school. They will jump into the PC with no real issue. Now Barb and the new kid will both move to PC and this point in time frankenputer will lose any relevance. Except that Barb loves the thing and keeps it at home writing letters on it until 2019.

It doesn't seem like the reverse feature would waste ribbon to me, each character on one of these word processors uses the same linear amount of ribbon, and that amount of ribbon cannot be used again. So it's kind of wasting less ribbon, since it's using all of the ink/carbon on that length of ribbon, rather than leaving a lot of it on the ribbon.

You are one of the only Youtubers (the other being Technology Connections) that can release a 1+ hr video, and I'll watch every minute of it without fail

Fun fact: italic  is possible on a daisywheel printer, and I personally have seen it in action. It utilizes a daisywheel with two "rings" (or "rows"?) of characters, and the entire wheel assembly moves slightly up or down to select a "text palette".
It was a common-ish design in Eastern Bloc because, well, the RUS/LAT problem which needed some solution anyway. Such machines were equipped with two wheels, one for RUS/LAT on separate rows and other for cyrillic/italic cyrillic. Clever and effective.

P.S. The almost universal use of the KOI-7 encoding with a separate character (and key on the keyboard) for changing the layout also fit perfectly into this technical solution. When printing, the system sees the required character and not only changes the code table to Latin, but also instructs the printer to shift the wheel. Same with Italic, just without code table switching.

That "Quickstart" wink was something that caught me off guard for a laugh, well played. And yes, Olivetti machines are fascinating for the fact that they're a pumpkin without their array of proprietary inputs.

I worked briefly at an Olivetti reseller in the 1990s. Loved the video and I hope I can add some cultural / contextual background.

Olivetti's are weird in part because they were coming at computers from their Business Machines background and this had a big impact on who they targeted.

Note the little silver branding tab stuck on the keyboard advertising the local business machines dealer it was sold through. Olivetti was a something you'd likely be introduced to by the folks who sold you your photocopier.

Our local reseller was owned by a family friend and I was in and around it and others for 15 years. Even in the late 1990s the showroom was dominated not with computers but photocopiers, electric typewriters, fax machines.

We shouldn't underestimate how many businesses held out with electronic typewriters until the turn of the century. While working as a technician in the late 90s I would visit workshops, factories, schools (mostly to fix photocopiers) and see so many being used in offices that were modernising, but without a single person on staff who'd ever touched a computer. As mentioned by other commenters hiring a person with typewriter skills was a lot easier than computer skills at this point.

The sales staff pitched the Olivetti PCs as an extension to the suite of machines you were already buying or leasing. They were often sold on support contracts, and serviced by their photocopier technicians.


Olivetti the company was designing and manufacturing a large line of complicated office machines, to which they added a PC line. I did a lot of work in the guts of Olivetti PCs and the physical design (fold away cases, swing-out components) seemed strongly influenced by those traditional machines. Support contracts are a big money and making photocopiers serviceable was core business.

This is entirely speculation - I wonder if the odd video output development was in any way influenced by the fact that Olivetti had video and lcd screens for their advanced photocopiers products.

Bit of perspective from someone who was there at the time... A lot of these were aimed at secretarial pools and professional typists. Typing was a separate skill (and a qualification that you earned ratings in,) that you learned if being a "typist" was going to be part of your profession - like operating a lathe or something. The top typing speed wasn't linked to the operator speed, but to the dictation speed. If you weren't high up in the hierarchy to have your own secretary, that would do the typing for you - after writing down your dictation in shorthand - you dictated to a dictaphone, or wrote out in longhand and dropped that off to a typist pool - which would operate the Olivetti style machines. Having a file menu wasn't important, each project would have its own floppy, or more, the file names would be written on the floppies - for ease of future filling - in a physical file drawer together with hardcopies and any other relevant documents.
As a private person, if you needed a typed document, say to submit a thesis for PhD or court; you'd write it out in longhand, then hire a freelance typist. They would type out a copy (optionally providing an editing service at extra cost, for grammar, spelling etc.) You would review the hard copy and mark up any changes, rinse and repeat, until you were happy with the final version. Usually, you were charged per word or character plus fees for edits etc. Often there would be a limit to the number of proofs. A freelancer temping at a business, would normally charge an hourly based on their wpm and experience.
If your document needed to have graphics, such as charts, you'd then take the copy and your graphics to a type setting place - you'd pay a fortune.
This is why the unintuitive interfaces, they were mostly professional tools; your criticism of the gui is like complaining that modern CnC machines aren't user friendly, they are not meant to be used by the general public.  People learned the chonker manual, because it was their job to learn it. Also, computer manuals had to be thorough enough for orgs to produce their own training material from them.

The Panisonic looks really interesting! Its an electronic typewriter so maybe once you dig in it stops being interesting, but I want to know what a bunch of those applications are! Here are what their names are top to bottom left to right with my best guess at what they are.

日本語 - Japanese - Japanese text editor
欧文 - Western text - Latin character based text editor
図形（イメージ） - figure/graphic (image) - an image editor of some kind maybe?
線画 - Line art - figure drawing application?
機能説明 - Help file
住所録 - Address book
レイアウト名人 - Layout master - Maybe a form creator or a form filler application?
プレゼン名人 - Presentation master - Powerpoint type thing. Maybe you print out clear slides?
文章名人 - Writing master - No clue, maybe a different text editor with tools like table of contents?
カルク名人 - Calc master - Spreadsheet software
電卓・時計・カレンダ - Calculator, Clock, Calendar
DOSデータ交換 - DOS data conversion - converts from proprietary files to DOS compatible?
データノートII - Data Note II - maybe a lotus notes type thing?
通信 - Communication - Likely a modem program?
拡張 - Expansion - Not sure, maybe more programs under this as a submenu?

The mystery port says "image input output", I can't quite read the DSUB but I think it might just say "port", and the expansion ROM is a font package with 48 dot Gothic in the JIS format.

I like how the bit about typewriters at the start is nearly the perfect inverse of Technology Connections’ “why typewriters are neat” pitch

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Loved the Jamie's comment that is just completely unfounded British slander(we deserve it) with the insistance on being wrong

I love tiny (relative) novel Japanese devices that seem to exist as a terrarium of its own purpose. Like a Swiss army knife of computing. That word processor looked so interesting, it's a shame we couldn't see all of what it could do.

19:40 I don't think it's a matter of 'input lag'. When you type Japanese (I do it regularly) you write using 'sounds' (that's not correct, but that makes it easier to explain what I mean) and the software, after pressing the SPACE key, allows you to select from within a list what you mean by that chain of 'sounds'. So there's a key that'll give you 'ki' and other that'll give you 'ke', another to change that to 'ge' and finally one more to add a 'n' sound to the end. So you press all these and you get all the words that are a compound of the sounds 'ki ge n' (there's more than one, in this case). As you type more and more, the software 'learns' what you usually type and provides that as the first option, so you can just keep typing and the software would (theoretically) choose always the best option for you. What I think is happening here is that the software is still trying to do that, even in English mode (take note how it highlights all the word once you press the space key), even if it doesn't need to do so. It might have some amount of delay.... but I'm sure the delay is worse because of the way typing Japanese works. (edit: corrected a couple typos and incorrect punctuation)