SMT Goupil (SMT - "Society of Microcomputing and Telecommunications") was a

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

IT company created in 1979 by Claude Perdrillat, previously a senior executive in the General Directorate of Telecommunications. The company produced many

microcomputers A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...

during the 1980s, mainly for French government agencies. This market collapsed at the end of the 1980s with the appearance of drastic budgetary restrictions in the French public sector and competition from more aggressive technological rivals like IBM,

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

and

Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of ...

. Despite a significant debt of 40 million francs, the company went public in 1985, claiming to hold 15% of the French microcomputer market. In January 1990, Goupil claimed to hold 18% of the market for professional microcomputers in France. The company filed for bankruptcy in June 1991 with the accounting books revealing a debt of 700 million francs and a real turnover of 830 million francs in 1990.

Models

The first Goupil G1 and G2 computers offered a promising architecture, with the integration of the

Motorola 6808 The 6800 ("''sixty-eight hundred''") is an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System (latter dubbed ''68xx'') that also included serial and para ...

processor coupled with the FLEX operating system. The machines had a sober and integrated design with particular colors - slate blue and red. The G3 extended compatibility in order to conquer foreign markets, by offering two processors at a time (selected at start-up by a switch) among three choices: the very common

Motorola 6809 The Motorola 6809 ("''sixty-eight-oh-nine''") is an 8-bit microprocessor with some 16-bit features. It was designed by Motorola's Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. Although source compatible with the earlier Motorola 6800, the 6 ...

Zilog Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples wer ...

and

Intel 8088 The Intel 8088 ("''eighty-eighty-eight''", also called iAPX 88) microprocessor is a variant of the Intel 8086. Introduced on June 1, 1979, the 8088 has an eight-bit external data bus instead of the 16-bit bus of the 8086. The 16-bit registers an ...

. This allowed the Flex 9 and UniFLEX operating systems that came with the machine to run under

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

and

UCSD Pascal UCSD Pascal is a Pascal programming language system that runs on the UCSD p-System, a portable, highly machine-independent operating system. UCSD Pascal was first released in 1977. It was developed at the University of California, San Diego (UCS ...

. The dark gray case, designed by designer

Roger Tallon Roger Tallon (6 March 1929 – 20 October 2011) was a French industrial designer. Biography After studying as an engineer (1944–1950), Tallon was employed by Caterpillar France and DuPont. In 1953, he joined Technès, the technical ...

, came with an integrated 12-inch

monochrome monitor A monochrome monitor is a type of computer monitor in which computer text and images are displayed in varying tones of only one color, as opposed to a color monitor that can display text and images in multiple colors. They were very common in t ...

, two

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

drives, and a bay for 7 extension cards in Goupil format. Further machines would seek IBM

PC compatibility IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

, as it became a standard regarding government equipment. *1979: Goupil G1, basic desktop computer *1981: Goupil G2, desktop computer with multiple configurations similar to those of

Micral Micral is a series of microcomputers produced by the French company Réalisation d'Études Électroniques (R2E), beginning with the Micral N in early 1973. The Micral N was the first commercially available microprocessor-based computer. In 1986, ...

*1983: Goupil G3, ''Nanoréseau'''''' network machine, similar to Micral *1985: Goupil G4, PC-compatible desktop computer *1986: Goupil G40, desktop server version of the G4 *1986: Goupil Club, PC

Kaypro Kaypro Corporation was an American home and personal computer manufacturer based out of San Diego in the 1980s. The company was founded by Non-Linear Systems (NLS) to compete with the popular Osborne 1 portable microcomputer. Kaypro produced a ...

2000 compatible laptop sold under license *1988: Goupil G5, PC-compatible desktop computer, several versions *1988: Goupil Golf, PC-compatible portable computer *1990: Goupil G50, tower server version of the G5 *1990: Goupil G100,

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

server initially designed by SFENA, characterized by input-output co-processors *1991: Goupil G6, PC-compatible desktop computer *1991: Goupil TOP, laptop with 10" backlit

LCD screen A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers. Liquid crystals do not emit light directly but in ...

under

MS-DOS 5.0 MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

(and

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...

installed later), offered in 2 versions: TOP (

80286 The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non-multiplexed address and data buses and also the fi ...

@ 12.5 Mhz) & TOP SX (

80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors Computing for All The Computing for All plan (''Plan Informatique pour Tous - IPT'') was a French government plan to introduce computers to the country's 11 million pupils. A second goal was to support national industry. It followed several introductory computer sci ...

, a French government plan to introduce computers to the country's pupils

References

{{reflist Computer companies of France Computer science education in France Computing for All French companies established in 1979 French companies disestablished in 1991 History of computing in France