Changes
Thomson
,Yet those machines were litteraly whipped out by Amstrad in the French market.
=History : a French phenomenon=
Despite this they were quite common because in the 80's, the french governement started a program "Plan informatique pour tous" (computering for all plan) which consisted of equipping schools with computers networks.
As a result, a lot of Thomson computers were only sold to schools.
=Range and products=
'''First generation :'''
*MO5
*TO7
*TO7/70
'''Second generation :'''
*MO6
*TO8
*TO8D
*TO9
*TO9+
=Impact on French Game companies=
Because a french computer, french games producers ported many of their games on those computers.
==MO5 and TO7==
The 1st generation of 8 bit thomson computers have a custom 4-bit RGBI palette of 16 colours.
[[File:Screen color test Thomson MO5.png]]
[[File:MO5 TO7 palette.png]]
The 2nd generation of 8 bit thomson computers got the addition of the 3 video modes of the Amstrad CPC/PLUS, in addition to the heritage attribute based mode.
But the palette have been upgraded into a 4096 12bit palette, the same as on the unreleased at the time Amstrad PLUS range (and of course the Commodore Amiga). Those Bitmap video modes are : *160x200x16 *320x200x4 *640x200x2 Minus the lack of Hardware sprites and raster interrupt facilities (still doable on Thomson machines), the MO6 and TO8 are actually superior to the Amstard PLUS Range due to the attribute based mode in addition to the 3 "CPC-like" modes. [[File:RGB 12bits palette color test chart.png]]