pouët.net

Wow! It takes some effort to run this on emulator (I was getting sector error something but what I was doing wrong is that both side1a and side1b should be inserted in the first two disks) but it's worth it. The sound is great, though it's a pitty most parts don't play sound. Is it CPU limiting or something? There is too much digital sound, the plasma part is great and the tunnel (like Overflow's backtro technique?). The vectorballs are really cool too. ANd the good quality images and video. Lot's of stuff here..

Wtf is a Thomson?

Yes.. on these machines the cpu is just too slow to allow plenty of cycles to play both sound and anims. Actually there is no dedicated sound-chip on this platform and the 1Mhz 8bits cpu must feed the primitive 6-bit DAC in real time to produce sound, which takes most of its time.

Video please, not going to bother with some lame comp.

A Thomson is a 8-bits French kind of machine from the eighties. There are several machines (TO7, TO7/70, MO5, MO5NR TO9, TO8, MO6, TO9+, TO8, TO8D) but they all share the same CPU: a 6809e motorola chip at 1Mhz, and a specific device, the light-pen which make these machines very innovative at that time. Though most information about Thomson computers are in french, you can find short descriptions in english here: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/company.asp?st=1&m=132. An emulator is available here http://dcmoto.free.fr/.

Well, I've tried my luck with DCMoto already, but for some reason I can't get the disks to be read.

Video is here: http://www.serveur87.com/forumthomson/forum2007/cptrendu03.html but caution, some 50Hz effects looks ugly due to improper video playback rate. Its better to look at the demo on an emulator, and even better, on a real TO8D machine.

Wow, a Thomson demo, mandatory thumb !

Those little TO7 and MO5 were quite trendy in France "back in the days" indeed.

I prefered to get an Amstrad CPC 6128 at the time though :)

Thanks for the video, isn't there by any chance a how-to for the emulator? I'm always getting sector errors.

For DCMoto, you'd better use the FD files here: http://dcmoto.free.fr/programmes/s/17/spaceproject-to8fd.zip . Don't forget to press space-bar to tell the demo to go on after inserting new disks.

Ah, thanks, should have supplied the .fd files in the first place, as I doubt that computer is/was popular outside france. It's a shame there's barely any music, but I really liked the big crunch and shuttle medley parts. Not knowing what the machine is capable of, you get a thumb never the less

thanks ;) Sound is really problematic on this hardware. Early demos on Thomson didn't even have a bit of sound or barely *one* bit ... which didn't sound good at all (beep/beep kind of noise). Now using tricks it's possible to mix animation and sound for some effects. This is really a breakthrough for this aging hardware.

respect for the achievements on the platform! but this is really boring and from my own experiences with the 6809 i think one could achieve better fx

@toxie
For my personnal interrest, what kind of machine also uses a 6809e? I've read about the Dragon and the Coco, but I don't know which kind of effect was achieved on these platform.

Thomson !!

Video please. Thumb for the specs and screenshots :O

Wow, cool stuff. :D Didn't know this platform at all. :) Lots of parts here and except for the "show random spaceship pics" part I like them all. :) Great demo.

Luckily I watched the video so I could skip past the boring slideshow at the beginning.. The actual effects were quite nice, cool stuff for a 1 MHz machine.

@__sam__: Didn't Commodore make one? And there were also arcade machines from e.g. Konami in the early '80s that used the 6809.

it does not work on MO5

To pr90600, it doesn't work either on a TO7 nor on a TO7/70, nor on an Atari nor on an Amiga.. Your're this stuff is probably bullshit.. but did you read the NFO describing the required harware ?

@mic: As far as I know, comodore didn't sell any 6809e personal computer. Olivetti did sell some TOx clones under the name "prodest".

@pr90600: oops I forgot a word: you are right, this stuff is surely plain bullshit, since it doesn't work on my coffee machine too.

Had some nice parts, but goddamn it was boring as hell as the parts went on for waaaay too long. And the lack of music during most of the parts didn't really help ;)
So piggie it is

that indeed deserves a :P

+great stuff
+platform
-way too long (but thanx to vidplayer, i can happily skip)

I didn't know such sound could be produced on Thomson ! I want one :) Nice demo !

Great!

Way too long, but definitely some good stuff in it.
Question: You don't even have a timer you can use for some low quality sample replay while doing animations?

Best demo for this plateform, a bit tricky to emulate.
Test it online (disk 1 & 2 only)
http://www.alternative-system.com/specific/emu/jteo/space.htm
(java +1.4 required)

IMHO deserves more nice comments. Obviously much work, with some visuals/fx which makes me want to know more about Thomson computers.

Amazing.

Another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gEtcvZUS0

Definitely lots of efforts there. Way too long indeed.

ok