In the 1980s, France was the stage for one of the boldest public computing projects of the era. Minitel was the French take on viewdata, and instead of making it an expensive and unattainable luxury, they made the terminals universally available. Many Minitel services cost extra to use, but despite this it was a runaway success that lingered on into the 21st century.
The ubiquitous terminals are now surplus to requirements, but that’s not to say they are useless. [MemoireMorte] has proved this with the Memo-1, a 6502-based computer designed to plug into a Minitel-1 terminal. It’s just the accessory your Minitel needs!
Hardware wise it’s a relatively conventional device with the usual RAM, ROM, and BASIC. There’s an expansion port, and a 6522 to provide a couple of Atari joystick ports. The serial port uses a a 6551 ACIA rather than the more usual W65C51 because of an incompatibility between the latter chip and the Minitel-1.
We like this computer, not because of novelty, after all it’s hardly the first 6502 we’ve seen, but because of its use of the Minitel terminal. These devices are magnificent, and deserve more love. We subjected another terminal to a teardown a year or two ago.
Thank you so much
Why stop there ? You can use the Minitel as a fun retro computer !
what can you do with a 80C32 and 8kB RAM ? a demo ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2HD6OzNoEo
(The NFZ 300 model has very nice looks)
I want one. Needs a port of vicdoom!!
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Vicdoom
Why would you needs more than an esp8266 ?
Have you seen ministraltel ? https://www.reddit.com/r/MistralAI/comments/1ubupf4/un_minitel_des_ann%C3%A9es_1980_en_terminal_de_chat_ia/
The Austrians’ had a home computer that worked natively with BTX service.
It was the MUPID. Needless to say it was very advanced, even by German standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUPID
Why do “German standards” apply in Austria ?
It never striked me before but now I’m seeing this I’m thinking a RC2014 board to allow plugging a Minitel to control a RC2014 computer would be awesome!
Or maybe not. Most Minitels have a French AZERTY keyboard layout.
There was a Minitel experiment in San Francisco in the 90’s with QWERTY Minitels through a ‘101 Online’ service. They advertised the Minitel through some Rave Parties (Cyberfest?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1r_a-V0uEQ
But AZERTY Minitel are the vast majority, but in any way stickers and ROM editing exists!