40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

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Bodhi
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40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Bodhi »

At https://digitalesleben.blog/2023/01/13/ ... eschichte/ a German Oric 1 and Atmos owner wrote a well researched article about the history of computers and Tangerine in his blog on the occasion of the release of the Oric 1 40 years ago.

The article is written in German, but can easily be translated e.g. with deepL.
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Dbug
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Dbug »

Thanks for sharing :)
There is an interesting channel on YouTube called Dbug's Stuff on Oric. A French guy living in Norway has posted a video series of 26 videos about this computer and its ecosystem. It is called Oriclopedia and is absolutely worth seeing.
Always nice to read this type of thing :D
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iss
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by iss »

Very nice article, indeed! Thanks and Happy Oric anniversary! :D
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Bodhi »

Dbug wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 2:03 pm Thanks for sharing :)
There is an interesting channel on YouTube called Dbug's Stuff on Oric. A French guy living in Norway has posted a video series of 26 videos about this computer and its ecosystem. It is called Oriclopedia and is absolutely worth seeing.
Always nice to read this type of thing :D
Hopefully you get some clicks now. :-)
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Dbug
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Dbug »

Doubt I'll get many more clicks, the most successful Oriclopedia video has 1200 views, most have just around 200 or even less.
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Symoon
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Symoon »

"It turned out that the cassette routines in ROM version 1.0 of the Oric-1 were faulty. This was the reason why Oric users could not load their purchased software properly from cassette."

Mmmmh, quite wrong IMHO. What's concerning is that this story is so much copied all over the place that it will soon be the official history.
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Chema »

After all these years and I still have to see a technical explanation of the issues with the tape routines.

It is true that I could not use most of the tape players back then with the 1.0 rom. When I found one that worked I also converted my 1 to an Atmos. However, loading things was still a challenge. I remember the small routine that was loaded prior to nearly any program (this routine appeared also in the Oric manual) which simply cleared the error flag ever interrupt, basically rendering error check useless. Not the way to go at all!

But even worse is the second version of the 1.1 rom with the error flag cleared in the routine itself. Bad decision!

Checking for errors during the sync phase was blamed for it, but I am not convinced. Probably there was something in the circuitry itself. After all, they said the routines were those of the Microtan, which were quite reliable (?)
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Dbug »

We know there are at least two revisions of the circuitry part, with different resistors values, so there was definitely something there.

That would actually be an interesting mod for the Oric: Somebody coming up with the ultimate hardware version of the tape loading/saving circuit, and some ROM code to go with it, to make it the most reliable Oric in the known universe.

Is that doable?
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Symoon »

Chema wrote: Mon Jan 16, 2023 2:11 am Checking for errors during the sync phase was blamed for it, but I am not convinced. Probably there was something in the circuitry itself. After all, they said the routines were those of the Microtan, which were quite reliable (?)
Early tapes duplication was probably a major issue.
IJK tapes could be used to test, as they were known for being really well recorded (providing the tape hasn't badly aged of course ;) )
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by jsk »

It seems interesting to me that the history of ORIC always talks about companies and inverstment, but nothing about the people who designed and built it!

Are they really that anonymous? Is there a "creator" of ORIC ATMOS? What is his history? Often there was a single driving force person behind a computer(company).

Are any of the creators around? Maybe they are lurking here? lol
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by dreamseal »

One of my favourite retro things to watch is the movie Micro Men that tells the story of the race between Acorn and Sinclair to get the contract to produce the BBC Micro. I think Tangerine might have been in the running early on? The movie focuses on the rivalry between Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry. I love it.

It would be interesting to get an inside dramatisation within the Tangerine offices from those days.
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by xahmol »

It is indeed very strange that I know everything about Bushnell, Tramiel or Sinclair but nothing on the creator of the Oric.
Would love to read it.
And yes, also loved Micro Men.
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Symoon
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by Symoon »

Guys, you should start here for Oric history:
http://oric.free.fr/STORY/contents.html
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by jsk »

Symoon wrote: Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:38 pm Guys, you should start here for Oric history:
http://oric.free.fr/STORY/contents.html
Thanks for the link. It reads more like "business" than technical. They seemed to thrive on releasing promises and then not doing anything. lol.
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Re: 40 years of Oric - a British-French computer story

Post by 6502Nerd »

I think the German blog is still fine though - people writing and talking about the Oric is no terrible thing.

But the oric.free.fr pages are excellent - more or less definitive I would say. I have read these before but ages ago so was nice to re-acquaint on the very well researched - and I *love* that the last chapter 12 right at the bottom says "Not the end". A true Oric fan!!
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