Why Palimbit
Palimpsest + bit. A palimpsest is a text written over an earlier one, which still leaves traces. A bit, short for binary digit, is a zero or a one.
The name felt right: I write new code on top of old machines so they can be read again. Their circuits, software and the people who made them are still there beneath it all.
The projects
BluMach was born so that the more than twenty machines I had emulated wouldn't just sit there gathering dust. It started from 86Box and brings together emulation, historical documentation and machine configuration.
CoreMach is an attempt to reorganise that emulation so it is more modular and portable, while BareMach aims to get it running on resource-constrained hardware without a full operating system.
I write it all up in the Labbook: my Olivetti PCS 286, the afternoon with AI when it booted again.
Thanks to those who left the clues
Before my experiments, there were already people trying to understand and preserve these machines. Their messages, files and code gave me somewhere to start.
- Don Rizzelli, for sharing photos, information and files of the Olivetti PCS 286 on the Internet Archive.
- EngiNerd89 (EngiNerd), for their earlier work on the PCS machines and the IOC02 controller in 86Box, published in 2021.
- ruben_balea, for their contributions to the thread about the first Olivetti PCS machines on the PCem forum. I saved the link during my initial research, but I haven't been able to find the full thread again.
- John Elliott, for their technical notes on the PCS 86 hardware.
And thanks to everyone who maintains 86Box, PCem and the documentation archives, and to those who share what they discover about their computers.
Why I write about it here
AI has let me attempt projects that used to look too big. It has also given me convincing answers that were wrong and solutions that needed a thorough review. In part, this is about learning to tell them apart.
Here I keep memories, documentation, code and experiments that go wrong, and now and then the joy of something finally responding the way I expected.
Start at the beginning: my Olivetti PCS 286 →
Contact
If you have documentation, memories of any of these machines or a correction, or simply want to talk about the project, write to me at contact@palimbit.com. That includes mistakes in the English translation.