Matra & Hachette Alice

A French micro of 1983-1985, derived from the Tandy MC-10 — same M6803, red case. The Alice 32 and 90 then replace the original MC6847 with an EF9345.

Identification

Field	Value
Manufacturer	Matra & Hachette (France)
Base	Tandy Radio Shack MC-10
CPU	M6803 @ 3.579545 MHz — ⚠️ core at ~0.895 MHz
Video	MC6847 (Alice) · EF9345 (Alice 32 and 90)
RAM	Alice 4 KB (8 / 20 / 32 KB options) · Alice 32: 8 KB (exp. 24 KB) · Alice 90: 32 KB
Models	Alice (1983) · Alice 32 (1984) · Alice 90 (1985)

Expected clock — measurement table ✅

Component	Frequency
M6803	3.579545 MHz at the crystal

The crystal and the core do not run at the same frequency

The M6803 receives 3.579545 MHz, but its core runs at ~0.894886 MHz — it divides by four internally. The MAME driver annotates this explicitly.

Measuring 3.58 MHz at the crystal is therefore normal: it is not the execution frequency.

Two video generations

The original Alice uses the MC6847, like the PHC-25, the Dragon and the CoCo. The Alice 32 and 90 move to the EF9345, like the VG-5000. Video diagnosis therefore differs by model.

MAME's caveats on the Alice 32 and 90

Both carry the "imperfect graphics" flag, and their character generator is a dump marked bad (BAD_DUMP) — borrowed from the VG-5000 for want of better.

In practice: a character display that differs from the emulator on these two machines proves nothing.

Common faults

Symptom	Likely cause	Lead
Won't start	M6803 or its crystal	⚠️ 3.58 MHz at the crystal, not at the core
No picture (Alice)	MC6847	A chip shared with other machines
No picture (Alice 32 / 90)	EF9345	Different chip, different leads

Repair (technician)

• Identify the model first: the video chip changes between the Alice and the Alice 32/90.
• MC-10 kinship: Tandy MC-10 documentation largely applies to the original Alice.

→ Methods: PCB diagnosis · Recap

Procedure — a dead computer, step by step ✅

What this adds

Ordered for a home computer: what kills these is its power supply, its battery, its capacitors, its socketed RAM and its keyboard — roughly in that order, and well before the CPU. → PCB diagnosis

1. The power supply — measured before it is plugged in. This is the one step not to swap around. On a machine of this age a supply does not simply stop: a 5 V regulator that fails high puts 7, 9, 12 V onto the bus and takes the RAM and the custom chips with it. Measure every rail off the machine, under a dummy load if you can, and only then plug it in.

2. The battery, if it has one. Any RTC or backup cell soldered to a board is a future leak. If yours has one and it has never been changed, take it out before it takes the tracks with it. → Backup batteries

3. Capacitors. Recap is the default on these machines, not a last resort — and on the supply first, since that is what protects everything else. → Recap

4. RAM, on its sockets. These machines were built to be repaired: the RAM, and often the logic, sit in sockets. Reseat everything first — thirty years of oxide is a classic no-boot. Then swap chips: a bad RAM chip usually gives a repeatable pattern of garbage or a screen frozen at a fixed character.

5. The keyboard. A console does not have one; a computer's is a wear part. A membrane keyboard fails as whole dead rows or columns — that is the membrane, not the machine. A mechanical one wants its contacts cleaning, not replacing. Check this page: the failure mode is often documented per model.

6. Storage — tape or disk. Both often come down to the same things: a dirty head, and for tape the azimuth and a belt turned to tar. ⚠️ On the floppy side, check whether the mechanism actually has a belt before looking for one: many do, but some drives are direct drive, and hunting a belt that isn't there means stripping a drive for nothing. A machine that boots but loads nothing is a drive fault, not a logic fault — do not go looking on the board for it.

7. Video output. RF, composite, RGB or a dedicated monitor, depending on the machine (see Identification). Test with something else before you conclude: a period modulator and a modern TV disagree far more often than either is broken.

8. Still nothing. Now the logic: rails on the board, reset, clock, bus. → PCB diagnosis

Archived documentation and schematics ✅

• Alice 90 — documentation — PDF

Provenance

Schematics of undocumented origin in the collection; the PDF is a manufacturer document with no explicit licence, kept for preservation.

Sources & attribution

• MAME — src/mame/trs/mc10.cpp (BSD-3-Clause): the Tandy Radio Shack MC-10, Matra & Hachette Alice, Alice 32 and Alice 90 family; the M6803 on a 3,579,545 Hz crystal annotated "0.894886 MHz" for the core's actual frequency; the MC6847 on the original machine and the EF9345 on the Alice 32 and 90; the three RAM configurations — 4 KB (8/20/32 options) on the Alice, 8 KB (expandable to 24) on the Alice 32, 32 KB on the Alice 90 — the 1983 / 1984 / 1985 years, the MACHINE_IMPERFECT_GRAPHICS flag on the Alice 32 and 90, and their character generator marked BAD_DUMP, shared with the VG-5000 driver (from DCVG5K) — https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/trs/mc10.cpp

Review & corrections

How this space is used

Spotted a wrong value, an outdated procedure, a chip reference that does not match your board? Say so here, with what you observed (model, board revision, serial number, measurement). Every report is cross-checked against a source before anything changes — an unverifiable correction is published as “reported by …, not cross-checked” rather than silently applied.

Reading is open to everyone; posting requires signing in with Discord. Reports from the wiki's declared reviewers are handled first; anyone else's are read too, but go through a human before anything is changed.