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Matra Alice

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Matra Alice

The Matra & Hachette Ordinateur Alice was a home computer sold in France beginning in 1983. It was a clone of the TRS-80 MC-10, produced through a collaboration between Matra and Hachette in France and Tandy Corporation in the United States.

The Alice is distinguished by its unique, bright red casing. Functionally, it is equivalent to the MC-10, with a Péritel (SCART) connector replacing the RF modulator for video output.

Unlike its progenitor, the Alice became a popular computer in its home country, aided by its presence in schools as part of the country's Informatique pour tous ("Information technology for everyone") programme.

Matra later released two successor models:

  • The Matra Alice 32 released in 1984 shared the case style of the original, but was a different computer inside, due to using the EF9345 video chip in place of the MC-10's 6847. The Alice 32 had 8 kilobytes of main RAM, 8 kilobytes of dedicated video RAM, and 16 kilobytes ROM (the ROM incorporated an assembler).
  • The Matra Alice 90 released in 1985 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.

    • Specifications

  • CPU: Motorola 6803
  • RAM: 4 KiB on-board
  • ROM: 8 KiB (Microsoft BASIC)
  • I/O Ports:
  • RS-232C serial interface
  • Cassette interface
  • Péritel video output
  • Expansion interface
  • AZERTY keyboard layout

    • All other specifications should be comparable to those of the TRS-80 MC-10, but have not been confirmed.

    References

    Matra Alice Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA