Like its little brothers Goupil and Goupil 2, the Goupil 3 is based on a back-plane architecture. You get the computer you want by adding different electronic boards. Thus Goupil 3 can be a tri-processor system: Motorola 6809 like its little brothers, Zilog Z80 for CP/M compatibility and Intel 8088 to match the emerging "IBM PC/MS-DOS" movement. The processors don't work simultaneously but can use a time sharing mechanism.
Like the Goupil 2, the Goupil 3 was especially designed for communication, and thus had a built-in modem. Among other things it can emulate the Minitel (French videotext terminal) or connect to data centers.
The 5.25" floppy disk drive can be replaced with an 8" drive (1.2 MB). A 10 MB hard disk was also available as an option.
The Goupil 3 can run under a lot of operating systems: Flex 9 or Uniflex (with the 6809), CP/M (with the Z80) or CP/M 86 or MS-DOS with the 8088.
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I had used one as a child. The price seems exact as I recall when my father shelled for one for his statistical research. The screen was not 8 colors as indicated but black-and-green. It had a modem (needed for the Minitel emul and it could actually connect to data centers for number crunching.) Don''t know the speed. I think it only had room for two CPU boards, and i recall there was an actual flip switch on the back to $ the working processor. Don''t know what you mean by "time sharing" but if that''s "power down, switch CPU, power up", then, yes!
Wednesday 29th October 2008
Florian (France)
NAME
Goupil 3
MANUFACTURER
SMT
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
France
YEAR
1983
END OF PRODUCTION
Unknown
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
Unknown
KEYBOARD
Full stroke keyboard with numeric keypad, editing keypad and 12 function keys
CPU
Zilog Z80 A / Motorola MC6809 / Intel 8088
SPEED
4 MHz (Z80) / 2 MHz (6809) / 4 MHz (8088)
CO-PROCESSOR
Optional numeric processor
RAM
64 KB (up to 1 MB)
VRAM
Unknown
ROM
40 KB (Basic) + 4 KB (Bootstrap 6809)
TEXT MODES
25 x 80
GRAPHIC MODES
none (optional 512 x 256)
COLORS
black & green original display (optional 8 color feature)
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