Olivetti - Compatibility plus! Along with almost every major manufacturer of the time, Olivetti was not one to refuse a spot on the bandwagon that was the IBM PC format. Here, it's offering an 8086 "true 16 bit" PC clone, although with a twist in the "transportable" M21 model - a luggable rather than a portable, in the style of the KayPro or the IMSAI PCS-80/30 from 1978. Billed here as "the leading European data-processing company", Olivetti would provide perhaps its longest-lasting contribution to the computer industry by bailing out struggling Acorn Computers in the following year, allowing Acorn to finance research-and-development of its Reduced Instruction Set Computing chip which first saw light of day in Acorn's Archimedes machine, launched in 1987. This was despite rumours in the press that Olivetti wanted to close down Acorn and run the RISC project itself[source: "Acorn denies 'close down soon' report", The Micro User, May 1987, p. 7]. It didn't, and eventually Acorn spun off its RISC processor to create a company called Acorn RISC Machines, or ARM - a company which is not exactly famous but whose core chip design powers most of the billions of phones and tablets in the world. At the end of 1984, Olivetti appointed a new press agency to "handle a campaign in which Olivetti's M24 and M21 micros will compete agressively against the IBM PC". The new press agency immediately proclaimed that Olivetti had "won the battle hands down against the IBM", with the agency's Tim Wickes stating "Olivetti has no option but to go for the throat". Wickes continued: ~"IBM's dominance of the PC market has little to do with technology and lots to do with marketing. One look at the products and you can see that Olivetti has won any technical battle hands down. Now it's gloves off in the marketing arena". Guy Kewney, reporting on this advertising insurgance, commented drily that "I do hope nobody gets trampled in the panic inside IBM HQ"[source: "Battle of the bulge", PCW, January 1985, p. 122]. [picture: percw_olivettitatandt_1986-05.webp|Joint AT&T/Olivetti advert for the Unix 3B, from PCW, May 1986]