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3617 TACHIBANA: the site is available on Minitel
Since 15 September 2026, tachibana.eu can also be read in Videotex, on the PAVI 3617: code TACHIBANA, three languages, 163 screens, six articles. How to get there, what is there, how it is made.
Tachibana keeps machines running and still writes for them; it made sense for its website to exist on the terminal that sat next to the Oric in French homes. Since 15 September 2026, 3617 TACHIBANA is live on the PAVI 3617, the association's Videotex server: the site's content, condensed into 40-column, 24-line screens, in French, English and Spanish.
1. How to get there
Three ways. In a browser: the Minitel emulator at 3617.fr, type TACHIBANA (or TACHI) then Envoi. With a Videotex client: a TCP connection to pavi.3617.fr, port 3617, same code. From an Oric: OricTel lists the PAVI 3617 among its preset servers, over a Hayes modem (PicoWiFiModemUSB / LOCI) or the WebSocket gateway ws://3617.fr/ws. The service is in the PAVI directory (Guide key) and on its "infos" page.
2. What is there
The home screen — the title in double height between two mosaic tachibana — opens on a 1-to-9 menu: who we are (Keep, Create, Pass on); the projects, on two screens of the same shape, Oric platform then Neo6502 platform, each project with its state; four sheets (Phosphoric, OricTel, PicoWiFiModemUSB, Astéroric) with web address and repository; contact; language (choice 8: Français, English, Español — FR, EN, ES + Envoi work from any screen); and the articles (choice 9).
Six articles can be read in full, condensed and paginated into 18-line screens: Phosphoric 2.0, the LOCI extensions, Porting Asteroids to an Oric-1, Neo6502: our work in progress (an original, written for the Minitel before the web), Porting: from Astéroric to AsteroNeo and Building a Prophet server for the Neo6502. Suite and Retour chain the pages; the last screen gives the address of the full article on tachibana.eu. 163 screens in all.
3. How it is made
The Minitel site is generated by a Python program, the source of truth, which produces the description file expected by the PAVI's Go server: positioned texts, rules, function keys, navigation. The Minitel imposes its rules and the generator checks them before writing: nothing outside 40 × 25, no overlap, a double-height line that also occupies the line above; the server's wrapping, which counts UTF-8 bytes — an accent counts twice — and would cut a line that is too long; the character set, ASCII plus the G2 accents. The server itself only encodes French accents: Spanish (ñ, á, ¿, ¡) is emitted as raw Videotex, SS2 plus accent, at the same position and in the same colour.
The graphics — the fruit, the sheet icons, the banner — are drawn in ASCII and encoded as G1 mosaic: a cell is 2 × 3 pixels and carries only two colours, an ink and a background; the encoder refuses a cell that would need three. Articles are wrapped at 39 bytes per line, with the server's rule, and cut into balanced screens: no empty line at the top, no heading at the bottom, no orphan screen. A home-made Videotex client-decoder (US, ESC, colours, double size, SO/SI, SS2, REP) replays the stream in 40 × 25; the tests walk the whole site on the Go server compiled locally. At deployment, the directory entry is inserted by the SQLite engine — never a file copied over a live database.
4. What we do not claim
The display of Spanish characters is checked with our decoder, which follows the STUM 1B standard, but not yet on a real Minitel nor on the 3617.fr emulator. There is no Dutch, German or Japanese version: the Videotex character set does not lend itself to it, and we did not want to cheat. The articles are condensed: the full text stays on the web. And the PAVI is an association's server, with no availability commitment.