Oric-1/Atmos

The Oric line of computers were produced by British company Tangerine in the mid 1980s. It was competitively priced for the time and was intended to compete with the popular ZX Spectrum in the low-end UK microcomputer market. The computer went on to have decent, albeit short-lived, success in Britain and France.

All of the Oric computers were based on the 8-bit MOS 6502 processor. A custom ULA provided the video system which allowed for 40x28 text or a graphical screen with 240x200 resolution on top of three text lines. Sound was provided by the GI 8912 offering three channels of sound across 8 octaves, although the internal speaker had no volume control. As was common at the time, the Oric could be connected to a television or to a RGB monitor. Oric initially shipped models with 48K of RAM, a cheaper 16K model became available after some production delays and by the end of its run, 64K models were available.

The initial model, the Oric-1 was plagued by a variety of errors caused by bugs in the systems built-in ROM that manifested both in a variety of inconsistencies in the built in BASIC as well as issues reading software on cassettes. This led to poor initial reviews although the system still enjoyed moderate success. Cash flow problems ultimately led to a takeover bid where Oric/Tangerine was taken over by venture capital firm Edenspring. February 1984 saw the introduction of the Atmos model which was internally almost identical to the Oric-1 but added a new full-stroke keyboard and an improved ROM and updated version of BASIC. Unfortunately the cassette problems weren't fully resolved but Oric expanded the capabilities of the machine with the introduction of a modem, printer and non-standard 3" disk drive available as add-ons late in 1984. The Atmos was also licensed to a Yugoslavian distributor who marketed the machine as the Oric Nova 64. (Despite its name, it also had only 48K usable RAM.)

Oric soon faced financial issues again and despite plans for an Atmos upgrade called the Stratos and a new line of 16-bit computers, entered receivership. The company was sold to French company Eureka in mid 1985. Eureka ultimately released a machine designed around the Straros called the Oric Telestrat for the French market which was designed to connect with the Minitel videotext system. Harnessed to an aging architecture, the Telestadt sold only 6,000 units. Ultimately Eureka (which had also taken the Oric name) also went under in late 1987 ending the run of the Oric computer line.

Nearly all games for the Oric were on cassette, although the system did support a non-standard 3" disk format.