olivetti LSX 3010

olivetti

LSX 3010

Year: 1988
CPU: Motorola 68k
Disks: 2x 60MB
OS: X/OS System V Rel. 2 Ver. 2
Ports: 1 Console Port, 3 Serial Concentrators with each 6 serial ports

History of this olivetti LSX 3010 (serial 01 89 013486 A)

The company ‘mgs informatik’ sold this machine in 1989 to the customer
‘Berner Lehrer Verein’ in Switzerland.
It ran a software called LOGO written in COBOL from the very same company
‘mgs informatik’. LOGO was used for address management and accounting.

Around 1998 (I cannot remember the exact year anymore) this server got replaced
with a Compaq server running WinNT SBS to run LOGO and the client terminals were
replaced with Compaq Windows PCs.
Shortly after the migration I deleted the customer’s data and since then this machine has been in my possession and waiting for resurrection in the attik.
In 2021 I booted it up and it still run perfectly. As this is a rare machine and OS,
I backed up the data from its disks to conserve for the future.

The filesystem on the machine seems to be limited to a maximum of 10MB per file.
That’s the reason I made about 10 separate tar files to not exceed this limit.
Those tar files are then combined in an additional tar.gz for convenience.
I copied the first 512bytes of each disk or partition (/dev/fphd* ) to hopefully
catch the MBR and bootsectors. But I couldn’t find the device file of the physical disk.
So maybe someone more experienced can find the data in those files (in mbr.tar)

The filesystem on the machine seems to be limited to a maximum of 10MB per file.
That’s the reason I made about 10 separate tar files to not exceed this limit.
Those tar files are then combined in an additional tar.gz for convenience.
I copied the first 512bytes of each disk or partition (/dev/fphd* ) to hopefully
catch the MBR and bootsectors. But I couldn’t find the device file of the physical disk.
So maybe someone more experienced can find the data in those files (in mbr.tar)

In 2021 I uploaded it’s data to archive.org and handed over the server hardware
to Heiko Schumann of https://olivrea.de
He is a passionate collector of vintage Olivetti hardware and I’m sure this box
will have a good permanent home now :)

How to connect

The server does not have external connections besides serial ports. So it’s not possible to connect it to a network.
To connect and backup the system I used a Macbook on macOS Catalina 10.15.7 with an USB2serial adapter using the following settings in Kermit 9.0:

C-Kermit>SET LINE /dev/cu.usbserial-xxx <=== use your own serial device here… C-Kermit>SET SPEED 9600
C-Kermit>
C-Kermit>connect

Olivetti X/OS System V (9600)
login: root
Password:

#

to download files use the following command while being connected with kermit:

# kermit -b 9600 -i -p n -s

your local kermit will automatically accept the file and show the following
transfer information:

C-Kermit 9.0.302 OPEN SOURCE:, 20 Aug 2011, myMacbook2020.local

Current Directory: /Users/username/ <==== this is your local folder

Communication Device: /dev/cu.usbserial-xxx <==== this is your local serial device
Communication Speed: 9600
Parity: none
RTT/Timeout: 01 / 03
RECEIVING: FILENAME.TAR => filename.tar <==== remote and local filename
File Type: BINARY
File Size:
Bytes So Far: 1486078
...10...20...30...40...50...60...70...80...90..100
Estimated Time Left: (unknown)
Transfer Rate, CPS: 505
Window Slots: 1 of 1
Packet Type: D
Packet Count: 101403
Packet Length: 92
Error Count: 0
Last Error:
Last Message: Transfer OK

X to cancel file, Z to cancel group, to resend last packet,
E to send Error packet, ^C to quit immediately, ^L to refresh screen.

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