[6] The machine came with three operating systems: MS-DOS 2.11 / 3.1, Concurrent DOS and UCSD p-System.

[9]: 71 With only two internal expansion slots available, Olivetti incorporated various standard interfaces, specifically a serial port and Centronics parallel port together with the video circuitry and connectors, onto the motherboard itself, avoiding the need to dedicate up to three slots to provide such functionality.

[7] Other expansion and upgrade options included a mouse interface, television adapter for SCART-equipped televisions, and a "dual speed kit" offering a 8088 CPU with an operating frequency of 4.77 MHz or 8 MHz selectable by the user.

[3] Paul Maynes, a technician at HBH Computers (one of Olivetti's dealerships in Durban) designed, and SA Signals Manufacturing (also of Durban) produced a bus extension card with a 90-degree bend (purportedly a world-first) that could accommodate a Seagate hard drive controller card.

[10][11][12][13] While the ETV 500 was just a M19 accelerated to 8 MHz and equipped with two 3.5 inch 720 KB floppy drives,[13] which used optionally an Olivetti ET series typewriter (usually a ET 112 or ET 116) as a serial-attached keyboard and daisy wheel printer, the ETV 260 was a fully-integrated word processor system with the M19 / ETV 500 accelerated mainboard mounted into a high speed 35 cps (characters per second) daisy wheel typewriter chassis, equipped with two 720 KB floppy drives or a single floppy drives plus an integrated 20 MB SCSI or MFM hard disk.