Olivetti Echos P75 (Model 860c)

Small notebook with touchpad (which was quite new technology in mid-90s), color LCD, sound card and Pentium processor. It has 8MB of RAM on board, RAM can be expanded by SIMM modules.
Not much is known about this notebook, but I found it has some legacy technologies, such as RTC battery soldered to mainboard (WILL LEAK!) or sound card in external module (in 1995 most notebooks had sound chip soldered in mainboard) and some new things in this class, e.g. bay for replaceable drives.

This computer has one problem, described in some web sites: Many units today suffer the "white screen" problem. some users think that it's a oscillator-related problem, I think it's connected to corrupted settings flash memory. This memory corrupts frequently and information about screen contrast, brightness and source selection is lost, making white screen (increasing contrast manually resets it to very dark, then brighter) and may even hang system at boot (BIOS can't read what's connected to display part).

Manufacturer Olivetti

Origin Italy
Year of unit 1995
Year of introduction 1994?
Type Laptop, PC
CPU Intel Pentium, 75MHz
RAM 8MB onboard +16MB SIMM
Floppy Disk 1x 3.5" 1.44MB in a bay.
Hard Disk Originally 1.2GB
Other media [with expansion bay]
Graphics and display: DSTN Color LCD 640x480x16bit

Card: Chips 65545
Sound: PC Speaker,

ESS ES1688 sound card
Keyboard and pointing device: Small PC keyboard without numeric part

Touchpad.
OS: Windows 95/98

Power supply:

1 - Ground
2 - +12-19V DC, 2,5A
I/O:  - Serial port
 - Parallel port
 - VGA out
 - Sound I/O
 - 2x PCMCIA
 - Drive expansion bay
 - Dock connector
 - PS/2 connector
 
 
 
 
 
 
Possible upgrades: Memory (2 SIMMs), CPU (Socket 5).
Additional peripherals:  none

Echos P75 has quite modern BIOS with Setup, but BIOS support battery (2,4V rechargeable) must be removed and substituted with something else or it'll leak and damage mainboard.

Unfortunately I can't say more about this computer because I don't have HDD cable for it. It needs 1:1 cable with male-female connectors. Male goes to mainboard, female to hard disk.

To disassemble:
0. Remove battery, hard disk, floppy/CD.
1. Open notebook, pull out two plastic tabs on the top of keyboard.
2. Open keyboard towards you, carefully pull keyboard's ribbon cable from connector. After removing screw remove shielding/heatsink.
3. Remove sound card from mainboard by removing two nuts from Mic/speaker connectors, then remove the card out the mainboard. You may leave it floating on cables.

 Now you can replace CPU (in Socket 5) but if you put something more than Pentium 133MHz it'll overheat. After you changed CPU remember to change DIP switches which can be found under sound card (CPU freq = Bus freq * multiplier):
 

Switch 1 Switch 2 Bus freq [MHz]   Switch 3 Switch 4 Multiplier
OFF OFF 60 OFF OFF 1,5x
OFF ON 66 OFF ON 3x
ON OFF 20 ON OFF 2x
ON ON 50 ON ON 2,5x

In some cases BIOS may display all settings >=100MHz as "Pentium 100MHz", but speed will be as set by switches.

4. Now we have to remove a whole top part - Remove one screw, in bottom-left of keyboard hole, now flip the computer and remove all bottom screws (4 or 5?). Carefully unlatch and separate top part from bottom, disconnect touchpad cable from mainboard.
5. Now you can take bottom part, remove RTC battery and replace it with something better. You have some space near PCMCIA slot, so you can solder diode and go with wires near expansion bay connector to the back of PCMCIA slot where you can put another battery, original is 2.4V.

Reassembly: Remember not to shut sound card between top and bottom part. Remember about touchpad connector, keyboard connector, shield/heatsink, it's really needed.