2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

In this forum you can write about anything that does not fit in other forums.
This includes generic Oric talkings and things that are totaly unrelated but want to share with people here :)
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Dbug
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2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by Dbug »

As some of you probably noticed, the Oric were released in 1983, which means that 2013 is the year marking the 30th birthday of the Oric computer.

There's a number of things planned for 2013, still in discussion, but I would like you to start thinking about what YOU can do for the Oric next year, being an update of your website, some facebook post, completing an Oric game, make a game or a demo, write some blog posts, etc...

What would be cool is if you could answer to this post by telling shortly what the Oric means for you, perhaps how you got it, why you still hang on places like defence force or retro computing, etc... Think what you would answer to a tv interview if you were asked to a retro event why you are here and what you think when seeing an oric machine :)

Note: These quotes will probably be used in some of the 30 years birthday celebration, so if you don't want that to happen please write it clearly :)
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ibisum
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by ibisum »

30 years old? Wow ..

What the Oric means to me now - the same thing it meant to me when I got my first Oric-1 at 1983: endless realms of possibility! :)

I got it after spending 2 years hanging out at the local "Computer Age" shop hacking on Apples and Atari's, and my parents finally getting sick of me not coming home until way past curfew. It got so bad that the sales guy was told, in no uncertain terms, never to let me stay in the shop longer than an hour .. okay, he gave me a floppy so I could save my work between sessions, he totally understood. But I had to buy an Apple/Atari or stop coming, eventually.

Well, then the Oric-1 was released in the UK. My Dad happened to be old friends of the guy importing them to Australia, so we bought one of the very first that arrived on that hot continent. I spent 1984 - 1989 getting together as much software as I could for my Oric-1, before moving on to other machines (Unix workstations .. MIPS, etc.) It was the machine I cut my teeth on.

Why do I "still Oric"? Because now I have two young kids, and I want them to know something about their Dad, eventually: he didn't ever believe that 'old computers die', just .. their users do. So, I've been slowly rebuilding my Oric-1 accessories, library, etc. Well, I've gone beyond the limits of good taste actually, with now a Telestrat, 7 Atmos's, 2 Oric-1's and various other sundry hardware (disk drive!) in my collection.

What will I do for Oric in 2013? Same thing I tried to do in 1983 .. write a great, fast, interesting and fun game for it! I'm a shooter fan, so it'll be a shooter .. ;)
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by kenneth »

For me Oric was like a door that provides access to another world...a virtual one.
With the first video games like pong in the 1970s that I discovered at a friend's home It was the first time that we could control the content of tv screen, but with a rumor about videogames which damage the CRT it was difficult to get a computer for Christmas.
Then later I went regularly to the store after school to try different computers as the TI99, Commodore64, these one had a real keyboard that I liked, and... Despite the Oric1 keyboard calculator, the great graphics and sound made me choosing this machine...Except that a few time before receiving my order I was informed that the oric1 was no longer for sale and would be replaced by the oric2. I didnt know what I had bought! And I was surprised when I discovered that my gift was called atmos, and which had a real keyboard. For me this machine means freedom creation. With other one that could be "this thing authorized and this other one is prohibited because too complicated for you, because you are just a primary schoolboy". the contents of oric Handbook means "I explains to you gently in the beginning, after it will go faster, and in the end, does what you want with, you are the boss"
Necessarily, websites like Defence force or Oricgames reminds me of those good moments.
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by coco.oric »

After a TI-59 and an HP-41CV, Oric 1 (and Atmos) was the first computer i bought in 1983 with 2/3 k7 and with the idea of programming.
In the eighties i've learned how to code on 6502, Z80 and 68000. I've also got later some c basics on st and amiga.

I've almost finished my big DIY at home (may be within the end of the year) so i'll be able to retry programming on my Oric

My 2013 dream is to repair my oric drive (and controller if it's damaged after a flash at the ceo winter meeting) and to code on my pc-oric with osdk a game. I hope that's i'll succeed in it.
coco.oric as DidierV, CEO Member
Historic owner of Oric, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by Pengwin »

After using my fathers Spectrum, I bought my Oric Atmos in early 1985 (I think). It definitely opened up a new world to me.
Since then, I have gone through Atari 8-bits, Atari ST, PC and Mac, but it was the Atmos that really gave me the programming bug.
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by maximus »

I played first home with a new console which proposed only 1 game: "Pong" :D on the old B&W TV, brothers and I were so excited, video games was only available in theatre hall or in cafés, and i had not enough money to win an "invaders" game.

So when the Oric-1 was born, for an accessible price, not like an expensive Apple, we bought it and it was such an exciting moment to live the birth of the home games.

The BASIC, the magazines with type-in programs, the first games, etc... it was really a new world, the virtual world, and we know now it was a revolution. So poor and without moneys we spent hours typing free listings of "TILT" , like incredible KONG, but the greatest moments were "Iron eagle", and "Tyrann", first 3D adventure game and first french adaptation of RPG. Unforgetable moments.

So thanks to the UK engineers for the ORIC and after for the Amstrad flag_uk
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by Chema »

30 years have passed already?! Incredible...

I remember perfectly how I looked a those magazines whith ads about home computers, all beyond my possibilities (yeah, maybe except the ZX-81). Soon after a couple of friends got their ZX Spectrum, one got an incredible C64... and my parents finally gave me my very own home computer: an Oric-1.

It was fantastic until I realized I could only dream with the games my friends ran in their machines. I got Zorgons, which was quite impressive, but the rest... well you know the feeling. And in a few months not only new software was not seen, but the computer itself stopped being even mentioned on mags.

But this turned out to be quite an advantage, as I could not do anything else than concentrate on what I could do with it: programming. And that indeed open a new whole world to me. In fact I think that is the reason why I chose computer engineering as my career (though time would drive me out of this path into something completely different).

I got an spectrum a couple of years later, and after watching the incredible games and programs that appeared for that machine, I put a lot of effort trying to make the old Oric do similar things... with no success of course (BASIC is not the best language for this, and CM was beyond my comprehension at that time where good books and tools were not easily available). Until I found this community, the C cross-compiler, the OSDK (a bit later on) and the incredible amount of information the Internet brougth directly into my hands. It was like getting back to 1983 almost 15 years later!

And that is why I am still developing things for the Oric, you know. And also that is why I still have it working at home (transformed into an Atmos) and spend wonderful hours facing the challenge of making it run the games that most impressed me :)

After some experimenting I started working on pinforic, as you already know. I loved text adventures and wanted to see the Oric running the best ones: Infocom's. Porting pinfo to the Oric proved to be not too easy. Thanks to Fabrice Frances we could add disk support and overlay ram access, so we could implement some kind of virtual memory to make the games run... or crawl until Fabrice rewrote most of the interpreter in CM. I promised him to learn CM, because it seemed the only way to do things that fit into memory and ran smoothly.

I needed some years of learning and experimenting, because I really wanted to learn how something like Knight Lore was done, so I designed and implemented the WHITE+NOISE isometric engine and, with the help of Twilighte and many others, Space:1999 was created. Looking back at it I am sure many things should have been done differently and it would have been more efficient both memory and CPU-wise, but I am quite satisfied with the result.

And what next? You know for the posts in this forum that I started to experiment with 3D, as Elite was another of my favourite games, and so 1337 was done. I am quite sure it was the best thing I ever programmed. And still it could have been better if I had dedicated a couple of years more to its development, but...

And then came SkoolDaze. I really wanted to have it on the Oric. I loved it on the Spectrum, and it was another unexplored path for me, with so many sprites moving and with such an incredible (by those times) AI. And this time it was clear to me that it had to fit in the Oric's 48K, so I could run it on my tape-based Atmos.

Well, I only hope this is not the end. I really find it exciting and challenging to do all this, and when I have no project in sight, I feel like something is missing.

Sorry for the loooong (and probably boring) post, but I always get too excited when talking about the Oric, and cannot control myself :)
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by ibisum »

Looking back at it I am sure many things should have been done differently and it would have been more efficient both memory and CPU-wise, but I am quite satisfied with the result.
Chema, please know this: I am also satisfied with the result!

Also, your 'long boring' is not at all boring! I yearn for more such details and news, even now, within the Oric scene.

I'm interested in doing an Oric title, although in between real life there has to be a seriously good way for me to do it that makes sense.

Like you, the Oric-1's dearth of software set me off on a serious computer-science bent - I wish I had all my old tapes, drats, especially J-UTIL-1 and -2, waah! Oh, the hacky tools I had ..

First of all, I learned to port software because of the Oric. I had a stack of all the best Brit/Aussie/US magazines of the time, literally harvested from wide and sundry in my local, desert beach locale, in Australia. Not easy for a 13 year old!

Every Oric listing I found was on tape, and any and all BASIC games that I could port/get running on Oric, too. This gave me a big collection of stuff, and earned me brownie badges against all the neighborhood families who had C64's and Speccies and Amstrads .. I was pretty much the only one who wasn't playing games, but actually programmed the thing. :)

This set me off on the path I have travelled for 30 years, (DOS/TurboPascal,TurboC->MIPS riscos,C->SGI,C/C++&etc->Linux->MacOSX->Mobile,Android,iOS&etc.) and now here I am, a systems developer in between jobs, looking at placement that will let me apply passionate skills to doing interesting things for users. I'd love, for example, to be given a chance to work more with the MOAI framework, but yeah ..

Sooner or later, I'll find time for an Oric title again. :) In the meantime, I do love hearing of the adventures and sharing the spoils of you great, great guys.


EDIT: I would like to do a shooter, using (perhaps?) the technique of pulsoids. I know Twilighte was working on a shooter too, at some point, but I've always wanted to do my own, with generated levels and whatnot .. so if I ever get the chance, that's what I'd love to look at doing..
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by kenneth »

happy birthday Oric!
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by Spocky »

For me Oric is an old computer, older than me.

My father have an Oric-1 since the beginning of it.

I''ve begin to work on it few time ago. My idea is to work on it to perform my programming skill. I will be an electrical and software engineer soon. Compare to modern computer old need to optimise code and it's a good exercise.

For the next year, I will try to make some demo (only or with other). But also have all what I need to use Oric on real life and not only emulateur. Nowdays, I have a Oric-1 16k without floppy or tapes drive. So I will buy an atmos 48k with one drive (or create one myself depending). And if I'm not too busy, I will try to make a pc-software were you can wrote music and transform it into oric code.

We will see :D
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by vrozos »

I watched the youtube video in oricgames.com. I remember the time when my dad got Oric Atmos out of the box. I was so much fascinated by its beauty. I don't think there is any other 8-bit machine that can compete Atmos in looks. Even today I find fantastic the Oric logo. Maybe I should make it a tattoo :)

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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by tim99uk »

I can remember that christmas day 1983, unwrapping my oric-1 with a software pack..i think most of the day was playing harrier attack :)

Then back to school..there were factions on the playground;

Speccy faction always seemed to the main stream, and copied each others games

Then the more wealthy parents got C64's and BBC-B's.

Then there was me and two other kids... one had a 48k Lynx,one had a 3k Aquirius and I had an oric.

You know what i did not care, and my speccy owning mates were green with envy when they heard manic minor ;)

FYI: the birthday was also marked in the register ; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/28 ... years_old/
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by kenneth »

Last week I made that routine for Oric birthday. (Sorry for the non-translation) :oops:
:wink:
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Dbug
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Re: 2013 - Oric is 30 years old!

Post by Dbug »

kenneth wrote:Last week I made that routine for Oric birthday. (Sorry for the non-translation) :oops:
:wink:
Nice :)

Well, I'm currently working on the birthday demo system, and I will be looking for participation for the demo itself.
Ideally effects should not be shown more than 30 seconds each, so if you can find a way to perhaps spice up the effect by adding raster colors, or some sound effect when it bounces (or perhaps a music), etc... that would be a good one to integrate in the demo.
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