page_title: Olivetti M24
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Olivetti M24 / Reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Olivetti M24 SP I/O Board Olivetti CGA Card (640x400 Mono), WD8003ED LAN, Gameport card and MFM/Floppy controller. I/O Board is one of the few 8086-class 16bit bus compatible boards that exist world-wide.
context_page_description: The Olivetti M24 is a computer that was sold by Olivetti in 1983 using the Intel 8086 CPU.
  The system was sold in the United States under its original name by Docutel/Olivetti of Dallas. AT&T and Xerox bought rights to rebadge the system as the AT&T PC 6300 and the Xerox 6060 series, respectively. The AT&T 6300, launched in June 1984, was AT&T's first attempt to compete in the PC compatible market.
context_section_description: A January 1985 review in InfoWorld declared it "a fair performer, better than the 8088-equipped IBM PC and PC XT and about equal to the 8086-based Compaq Deskpro", and taking pricing into account concluded that it was "a good deal, but by no means perfect." The reviewer wondered how the "5 MHz" 8086 in the Compaq ran as fast as the same processor at 8 MHz in the AT&T machine; however, this appears to be a misunderstanding given that the Compaq was switchable between a guaranteed IBM PC-compatible 4.77 MHz and an enhanced-performance 7.16 MHz clock rate (respectively one-third and one-half of the same NTSC colourburst crystal used in the IBM, but not the Olivetti/AT&T), and defaulted to the latter on boot, as detailed in other publications of the time, and endlessly misreported (including as "8 MHz", about as frequently as the miscalculated "7.14 MHz") ever since. The reason behind the M24/6300's failure to perform any better than equal with the 1/9th-slower Deskpro may be traceable, as hinted at in the InfoWorld review, to poorly optimised graphics routines in the BIOS, which would have a particularly noticeable effect in the high resolution 640x400 and extended colour modes.
  A November 1985 review in PC Magazine of the hard drive-equipped version found it on par with the (6 MHz, 80286 equipped) IBM PC AT as far as processor performance was concerned, but with considerably slower I/O.
  The initial model of the AT&T 6300 (no hard disk and only 360K floppy) had slow sales in 1984 with only 28500 sold compared to 1.5 million IBM PCs. The sales were not much better in the first three months of 1985, with only 8500 sold in that time period. If fact, worldwide sales of the Olivetti M24 were only 42000 in the first year, well below the planned production capacity of 200000. As a result, AT&T introduced the faster models with hard drive and a math co-processor in March. Still, after about one year on the market, AT&T had only claimed about 1% of the PC market, on par with that of TeleVideo and Columbia Data Products, but well below that of Compaq and Kaypro. By December 1986 however, AT&T's PC line (including the 6300 Plus, described below) put it in the fourth place in terms of market share in the US.
  Olivetti's M24 did much better in Europe, where it became the market leader in 1986. The company produced almost half a million M24 machines that year, about 200000 of which went to the United States. As it claimed the crown of most PC machines sold in Europe that year, Olivetti also became the third largest PC manufacturer worldwide. Olivetti would however be unable to repeat the feat in the subsequent years, and so 1986 represents the company's apogee in terms of PC market share.
  The 6300 was also supported by Unix-based operating systems particularly by Venix/86 Encore, released in September 1984, and by a version of Xenix adapted for the machine by the Santa Cruz Operation, and announced in June 1985.
caption: Olivetti M24SP I/O Board
exif: {"Image Make": "Microsoft", "Image Model": "Lumia 930", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Phone", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2256", "GPS Tag 0xEA1C": "[]", "Image GPSInfo": "53908", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "17/200", "EXIF FNumber": "12/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "125", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:08:12 12:34:37", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:08:12 12:34:37", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1778197/500000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "253/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Average", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "8", "EXIF FocalLength": "223/50", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "043", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "043", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4990", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3742", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "12"}