I have managed to get hold of an Oric-1 by Tangerine Computer Systems. Despite looking a bit like the original Sinclair ZX Spectrum, it was powered by a 6502 and was slightly larger, with an angled keyboard, however the keys on the keyboard are hard plastic, and are awful to type on, they are like Tic-Tacs
The machine was reasonably successful in the UK and France, so a successor called the Oric Atmos was developed, it was pretty much the same machine, but with a much improved keyboard and updated ROM. There were later machines called the Oric Stratos and Oric Telestrat, these were made by a different company
The Oric-1 was available with either 16k or 48k, just like the spectrum, but had the popular General Instruments AY-3-8910 sound chip, which played out via the on-board speaker
The machine looks cool enough, but that keyboard is just terrible, the buttons are hinged at the top, so feel like they are swinging on a pivot. On the bottom of the machine is the speaker, it's quite a lot larger than the beeper in the Speccy, and sounds quite loud. Just to the right of the speaker is the reset button, this would operate like the Break/Space key, or Run/Stop key by interrupting BASIC programmes and returning you to a Ready prompt, the BASIC programme would remain in memory and would be displayed by the usual LIST command, unfortunately if like me you have fat fingers, you'll need a pencil or other pointing device to press it
Some helpful former owner has written the PSU specs on the base, but it's not 6Vdc, it's 9Vdc
There is not much going on at the rear of the machine, an RF output, two DIN sockets, the left being for a RGB monitor, and the right for the cassette in/out. The smaller block connector is for a printer, and the larger is labelled "Bus Expansion". Then there's a cheeky little power connection next to that on the right-hand side
Neither side has any ports, but you can see the angle on the case, the keyboard overhangs the base by quite some distance
It came with an aftermarket PSU, which is rated at 9Vdc 600mA with a centre positive barrel plug, and what looks like an aftermarket cassette lead, this has the three standard plugs like other machines of the era
Time to power it up, and it booted to a black screen with random characters all over it, but with a bit of percussive maintenance it now boots properly, the RF output is terrible, but this may be the RF lead. Happily this appears to be the 48K model, also each keypress causes a short beep when pressed, the tone is different for the type of key pressed. This can be turned off via a keyboard shortcut
I tried the usual BASIC programme, and quickly found there's no way to stop it via the keyboard, I downloaded the user manual and found out you need to use a pencil to press the reset button on the bottom
While scanning through the user manual I found this charming quote!
Anyway this machine has keyboard shortcuts like modern PC's, you hold CTRL and press a letter key to access functions, like swap to lower-case characters, copy lines of text to the line buffer, and change graphics mode etc
Also the BASIC contains two commands called ZAP and PING which plays sound effects
Software
Xenon 1
Invaders
Zorgons Revenge
Candy Floss and Hangman
Welcome to Oric
Harrier Attack
Space Shuttle
A "blank" cassette
Books and Magazines
Meteoric Programming
The Oric Handbook
Oric Owner
Theoric (in French)
And here is a printed out fanzine type magazine
DEAD??? No!! I'm an alternative micro!!
An arty type photo
And here is the Oric compared to a Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, and a Sinclair Spectrum for a size comparison
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