Matra Alice
The Matra & Hachette Ordinateur Alice is 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 bright red casing. Functionally, it is equivalent to the MC-10, with a SCART connector replacing the RF modulator 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. Less than 50 games were released for the system.
The original model had 4 kB of RAM and used a Motorola 6847 video display generator chip, as used in the Dragon 32 and Acorn Atom among others.
Specifications
- CPU: Motorola 6803 at 0.89 MHz
- RAM: 4 KiB on-board, expandable to 20 KiB with a plug-in memory module
- ROM: 8 KiB (Microsoft BASIC)
- 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
- Keyboard: AZERTY layout
I/O Ports:
- RS-232C serial interface
- Cassette interface
- Péritel video output
- Expansion interface
