Oh hey look what popped up on my feed:
https://mobile.twitter.com/PulpLibrarian/status/1012770446129926145
@enkiv2 Now a real challenge for retro-computing enthusiasts would be to find a working French Minitel and find a way to put it to work via telnet over the internet.
@enkiv2 I don't know. If I had to guess, I think French retro tech didn't get spread around the world as much. I think Aussies and other former colonies got access to BBC micro and Sinclair. It's not unthinkable that other devices from that era enjoyed a similar destiny.
I got lucky to use a Minitel when I was little, but that wasn't normal for most people.
TBH I think it was the Alice computer which didn't turn up much outside France, there was already the Tandy equivalent for USA and (briefly) the similar Dragon 32 in the UK.
Whereas some Minitel terminals were made by Philips and also used by PTT Netherlands for their domestic viewdata service, as well as for BT Prestel (especially with an interlinked experimental home banking system in the UK).
to be fair it was in the era where such equipment was usually rented from the national telecom provider, and often carried its branding as well as (sometimes instead of) the OEM, and/or the contract did not specify a certain make (e.g in FR some terminals were made by Alcatel, I also remember seeing viewdata terminals in libraries (connected to a local network to search the book catalogue and sometimes community info) made by other European and Japanese OEMs..
@vfrmedia That's interesting. I didn't remember there were Philips Minitels. It makes sense that they would have deployed them in Belgium as well, without need of translation on the French side, and using the Dutch version on the Flemish side.
@enkiv2 @djsundog