The Matra & Hachette Ordinateur Alice is a home computer sold in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

beginning in 1983. It was a clone of the

TRS-80 MC-10 The TRS-80 MC-10 microcomputer is a lesser-known member of the TRS-80 line of home computers, produced by Tandy Corporation in the early 1980s and sold through their RadioShack chain of electronics stores. It was a low-cost alternative to Tandy ...

, produced through a collaboration between

Matra Matra (an acronym for Mécanique Aviation Traction) was a French industrial conglomerate. During its years of operation, it was engaged in a wide range of business activities, primarily focused around automobiles, bicycles, aeronautics and wea ...

and

Hachette Hachette may refer to: * Hachette (surname) * Hachette (publisher), a French publisher, the imprint of Lagardère Publishing ** Hachette Book Group, the American subsidiary ** Hachette Distribution Services, the distribution arm See also * Hachett ...

in France and

Tandy Corporation Tandy Corporation was an American family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. Tandy Leather was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store. By the end of the 1950s, under the tutelage of then-CEO Charles Tandy, ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. The Alice is distinguished by its bright red casing. Functionally, it is equivalent to the MC-10, with a Péritel (

SCART SCART (also known as or , especially in France, 21-pin EuroSCART in marketing by Sharp in Asia, Euroconector in Spain, EuroAV or EXT, or EIA Multiport in the United States, as an EIA interface) is a French-originated standard and associated 2 ...

) connector replacing the

RF modulator An RF modulator (or radio frequency modulator) is an electronic device whose input is a baseband signal which is used to modulate a radio frequency source. RF modulators are used to convert signals from devices such as media players, VCRs an ...

for video output. The Alice never became a popular computer in its home country. It tried to invade schools by being part of the country's '' Plan Informatique pour Tous'' ("Information technology for everyone") programme, but Thomson won the whole deal. The original model had 4 kB of RAM and used a Motorola 6847 video display generator chip, as used in the

Dragon 32 The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales before mov ...

and Acorn Atom among others. At least three emulators for the system exist.

Specifications

The machine is similar to the TRS-80 MC-10, with the following specifications: * CPU: Motorola 6803 at 0.89 Mhz * RAM: 4 KiB on-board, expandable to 8 KB * ROM: 8 KiB (

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

) * I/O Ports: **

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' ('' data terminal equipment'') suc ...

C serial interface ** Cassette interface ** Péritel video output ** Expansion interface *

AZERTY AZERTY () is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys; that is, ( ). Similar t ...

keyboard layout * Display: Motorola 6847, 32 x 16 or 64 x 32 with 8 colors, 160 x 125 with 4 colors (with expanded RAM) * Sound: 1 channel, 5 octaves

Successor Models

Matra later released two successor models: * The Matra Alice 32 released in 1983 shared the case style of the original, but was a different computer inside, due to using the EF9345 video chip. The Alice 32 had 8

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix '' kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quanti ...

s of main RAM, 8 kilobytes of dedicated video RAM, and 16 kilobytes ROM (the ROM incorporated an assembler). The CPU was clocked at 1 Mhz. Higher resolution graphic modes included 320 X 192 with 16 colors from a 256 color palette. * The Matra Alice 90 released in late 1984 was an upgrade to the Alice 32, which featured 32 kilobytes of RAM and a full-size case and keyboard. Its video cable included video-in, so EF9345 graphics could be overlaid onto the input video. * The Matra Alice 8000 released in 1985 was a more powerful machine with two CPUs, a 6803 at 4,9152Mhz and a

Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external Bus (computing), data bus instead of the 16-bit computing, 16-bit bus of ...

. It had 64KB of RAM. The EF9345 video chip in the Matra Alice 32/90 was capable of displaying 8 colors, 128 alphanumeric characters, and 128 semi-graphic characters with a semigraphic mode and 40- and 80-column text modes. It could address up to 16 KiB of dedicated VRAM although the Alice 32 and 90 only included 8 KiB. The 32x16 semigraphic mode of the original Alice was simulated in software by the Alice 32/90 system ROM.

Specifications

Successor Models

References

External links