The EXL 100 is a computer released in 1984 by the French brand Exelvision, based on the TMS 7020

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

from

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

. This was an uncommon design choice (at the time almost all home computers either used

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small ...

Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog that played an important role in the evolution of early personal computing. Launched in 1976, it was designed to be software-compatible with the Intel 8080, offering a compelling altern ...

microprocessors) but justified by the fact that the engineering team behind the machine (Jacques Palpacuer, Victor Zebrouck and Christian Petiot) came from Texas instruments. It was part of the government

Computing for All The Computing for All plan (''Plan Informatique pour Tous'' – ''IPT'') was a French government plan to introduce computers to the country's 11 million pupils. A second goal was to support national industry. It followed several introductory comput ...

plan and 9000 units were used in schools.

Design

The design is unusual compared with similar machines of the time, as it had a separate central unit. Two keyboards were available: one with rubber keys and another with a more standard touch. Keyboard and joystick were not connected to the central unit by a cable but by infrared link, and are battery powered. Many extensions were available:

modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...

floppy disk drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

and a 16 KB

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

RAM powered by an integrated

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. Its TMS 5220 sound processor was capable of French

speech synthesis Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...

, another unusual feature.

Specifications

*Release price: 3,190

French franc The franc (; , ; currency sign, sign: F or Fr), also commonly distinguished as the (FF), was a currency of France. Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amoun ...

s * CPU: TMS 7020 at 4.9 MHz * Graphics chip: TMS 3556 (40 x 25 character text mode, 320 x 250 pixel graphics mode, 8 colors) * Sound: TMS 5220 (with

in French) * Storage: cartridge port, cassettes, optional floppy disk drive * Memory: 34 KB RAM (2 KB RAM + 32 KB Shared VRAM), 4 to 32 KB ROM

Variants

A version with an integrated V23 modem named Exeltel was released in 1986.

Software

The machine came with a

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version on cartridge named ExelBasic. There are more 140 games for the system.

References

Computers designed in France 8-bit computers {{microcompu-stub