Thomson MO5/TO7

[cvenditti]

I was wondering if anyone will be interested to have the Thomson MO5 and TO7 (French computers from the 80's) to be ported or developed to MiSTer

I look online for exiting FPGA development, I only find this old web page from "Torlus" on the MO5:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071114014 ... -in-a-fpga

I sent an email to Torlus to see if we can have the source for the MO5. Will see.

[Newsdee]

These were very popular with French schools. I remember having a room.of networked MO5s that got data from a central PC server. We ended up playing.games on that PC instead..

[bhamadicharef]

This would be interesting ! Used the Thomson MO5 in my youth ... from a quick Google search for the schematics there seems to be a Gate Array to get right but if Torlus can help about this, it would be fun ! Can we find the ROM with the basic language ?

[cvenditti]

Can we find the ROM with the basic language ?

here: https://edgeemu.net/details-40577.htm

[bhamadicharef]

I have emailed Torlus to see if we can get the VHDL of the Gate Array
as this is the one part we cannot guess unless we've had one hardware
to probe. Hopefully the author will share with us. One 6809E is needed
and have to check what are the real difference with 6809 ...

[BitsNStuff]

Always interesting to find out about new Classic Computers. These are completely new to me so that's pretty exciting.

I watched this RetroManCave video on Thomson Computers which was useful, I'm sure there are others on here who haven't heard of them so I may as well post it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPxQR2r6iVA

[bhamadicharef]

The main unknown would be the Gate Array, but from page 112, there some explanations from this PDF
http://www.progettosnaps.net/manuals/pdf/mo5.pdf (In French). I hope two members of one internet
forum about Thomson computers will help with some vhdl code of this Gate Array (it mainly generate
clocks and ras/cas signals from what I read so far).

[cvenditti]

Here is the code of the S3MO5 (Spartan-3) from Olivier.
A big thanks to Torlus for reaching Olivier and getting the source code.
I might try to do the port to MiSTer if nobody tries but if someone with more experience wants to give it a shot first, please do it .

s3mo5-1.0.zip

[alanswx]

Here is the code of the S3MO5 (Spartan-3) from Olivier.
A big thanks to Torlus for reaching Olivier and getting the source code.
I might try to do the port to MiSTer if nobody tries but if someone with more experience wants to give it a shot first, please do it .
s3mo5-1.0.zip

I think we will need to redo how this core talks to ram. How the memory map is laid out. The Xilinx seems to have a wider address bus.

[haricot42]

for those interesting in these computers ( MO5 /MO6 /TO7 / TO9 )
here is a reference site with a very nice emulator and lots of informations (schematics ,roms and ref. book ).
http://dcmoto.free.fr

This site also contain nearly all the softwares published for these computers (1000+).
I got two working units for test purpose if needed ( MO5 and TO7 ).
I already contacted the main dev. of DCMOTO for technical questions and i think he can help about any aspect of hardware ...

[bhamadicharef]

Looking into the 3smo5.zip archive ... lots of nice test bench !
Will check if this design fit into a Papilio Pro to start with.
Any MO5 games anyone want to see tested first ?

[Xavierm]

Hope you'll success to make it work under MiSTer. I love TO7 70 as it was my first computer.
If it can work on fpga I could use it with more recent hardware and code on it as in my youth.

Good luck, I keep an eye on your work, I want to try the same thing for the pencil II from hanimex if it's not too hard!

[tempus007]

Looking into the 3smo5.zip archive ... lots of nice test bench !
Will check if this design fit into a Papilio Pro to start with.
Any MO5 games anyone want to see tested first ?

The mythical "l'Aigle d'or" on M05.

[mahen]

"Sapiens", "Le 5è Axe", or "L'Aigle d'Or"