Exelvision EXL100

EXL100 with its infrared keyboard

The EXL 100 is a computer released in 1984 by the French brand Exelvision, based on the TMS 7020 microprocessor from Texas Instruments.

This was an uncommon design choice (at the time almost all home computers either used 6502 or Z80 microprocessors) but justified by the fact that the engineering team behind the machine came from Texas Instruments.

Specifications

• 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 speech synthesis 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
• Keyboard: AZERTY layout and infrared link

Variants

A version with an integrated V.23 modem named Exeltel was released in 1986.

Links

• https://wikipedia.org/wiki/EXL_100
• Documentation technique EXL100
• TMS7000 CPU family - Programmer's pocket reference
• Texas Instruments TMS 3556 graphics chip datasheet
• Texas Instruments TMS 5220 sound chip datasheet
• DCEXEL Emulator for Windows and collection of 158 programs and games
• Exelvision EXL100 - l'ordinateur qui parle mais qu'on voulait faire taire ! by Olipix