Notable for its striking shape and bright red colour, the Alice 90 is an upgraded version of the Alice 32 which had not been a great success. Running on a Motorola 6803 processor, it had a full-sized keyboard and 32K of RAM, twice that of the previous machine, with more available to the user.

It cost a not insubstantial 1495 Francs in 1985. It was backwards compatible with the 32 model and used the same BASIC. Both machines were aimed at the first time user.

It could be connected to an equally brightly coloured monitor, cassette, deck and printer. It supported video-in on the video cable to allow overlaying graphics and text on an external video signal. Also a TV picture could be split with the computer screen.

It runs on Micro Colour Basic from Microsoft and had 8KB of memory dedicated to its video display. The computer has connections for RS 232C, Péritel SCART, Cassette and an extension bus connection.

Sadly despite this new attractive facelift, the computer was already underpowered compared to other machines on the market, so sales were very low. With competition from Amstrad, the MSX machines, and the newly emerging Atari ST, it was far too outdated to be of use to even those yet to enter the world of computers.

It is by far the rarest of the Alice computers.

Manufacturer: Matra
Date: 1983

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH31844. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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