The MO-5 was presented alongside the TO 7/70, in march 1984. While the TO-7/70 follows and enhances the TO-7 philosophy, the MO-5 is more a cut-down version of the TO-7/70. The idea was to design a coherent French home computer, able to compete with such systems as the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64.
The case of the MO-5 is elegant with its anthracite colour and pleasant lines. The keyboard, though made of rubber keys, is an improvement over the flat membrane keyboard of the TO-7. Most BASIC statements are engraved onto the keys and can be directly entered by pressing a special BASIC key and the key matching the desire statement. But the Basic commands can also be typed in letter by letter. The keyboard layout is AZERTY which is normal as the MO-5 is a French system. Accentuated letters can directly be accessed by pressing the ACC key, followed by the desired key (6 for é, 7 for è, 8 for ù, 9 for ç and 0 for à). There are also four arrow keys, INS to insert a space, EFF to delete the pointed character, STOP to pause a program, CNT to resume a program stopped and RAZ (remise à zéro) to clear the screen.