Five Rare British Micro Computers - Show & Tell
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 พ.ค. 2024
- We have raided the Swindon Museum of Computing and grabbed five rare British micro computers to show you today.
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But...but.....Camputers Lynx!!!!? ☹️
A great video as usual.... Thank you.
Love to see deep dives into the MTX and Enterprise.
There's one machine I'd love to see covered more - the Robotron Z1013, of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It's a 1984 machine, designed to compete with the growing home computer scene which was doing so well in West Germany (and the rest of Europe and the world). Robotron were a state-owned affair that made computers for government and industrial use, who were charged wth creating a cheap home micro that would help keep the GDR competitive with the west. Unfortunately, West Germany had a plant where they manufactured Commodore 64s, while Robotron used chips that were rejected from other machines due to performance or manufacturing issues. the rest of the computer was similarly cheap - a single board machine, with keyboard that would make the ZX80 look like a touch-typists dream, you had to assemble your own power supply, case, and procure a television to act as the display. Like the ZX80, it was entirely character based, with no graphics routines. It's also all in German. There don't seem to be any in mint-on-box examples, as everyone who bought one had to fashion a better case than the vacuum-formed tray the machine arrived in. And as soon as the Berlin wall fell, those pesky West Germans sold their Eastern brothers and sisters their old C64s, while they went and bought a nice new Amiga or Atari ST.
1984-finally-an-east-german-home-computer.html
I have to vote for the Grundy Newbrain simply because of the name. If you can get hold of one of them I would love to see it working... but that might be a Treasure to Treasure episode??
RetroManCave id love to see a video on the Oric-1 and Atmos as well as the memotech and the enterprise 128
I want to see full episodes on all of the computers featured in this video. This video was great and all to see rare machines, but fact sheets are not enough, I want to see them in action.
Yep second this. Maybe a flight sim on the Enterprise 128
Thirded.
If you made the episode long enough you could probably review every game sold in WH Smiths (in the 1980s a major UK retailer of computers) for them back in the day. Do that for the Spectrum and the episode would still be going next year.
Absolutely. We need a follow up on how the machines ran. What games were like. How good or not they were to use.
Yes, big old tease by not seeing these powered on and working...especially the Enterprise 128, since that's a complete new one to me.
PEEL IT! Peel the label!
RetroManCave talks to a future version of himself.
I thought it was he uncle?
They could honestly be brothers. Nice beards aside they have very similiar facial features.
I was thinking the same thing lol
They do look eerily similar.
which one is which?
He's a Time Lord.
“No retrobriting needed”
8-Bit Guy has left the chat.
**The Retro Future has left the chat**
**LGR has left the chat.**
It was great to finally get to sit behind the lovely wood desk, surrounded by all the interesting things in the cave, talking about old computers with a like minded person!
I'm excited to see the Enterprise, Memotech, and SAM Coupé in action!
Having grown up with Atari, Apple and Commodore over here in the US, I really enjoy being able to learn more about the other side of the computer revolution in the west, especially in the UK. So much amazing tech with wonderful stories behind them!
I literally spotted the Atmos from the video thumbnail. I am in the process of making the Re-Oric (a 10x10cm Oric1/Atmos replacement board with SMT components and a few other goodies) and I'm also working on Project Atmos(fear), which is a re-imagined successor to the Atmos, akin to what the Sam-Coupe was for the Spectrum.
Neato ... do you have a website for the project? I kinda regret giving away the Atmos I had at one point, but on the other hand semi-modern mass storage solutions cost an arm and a leg
@@1337Shockwav3 I don't. It was only supposed to be a pet project. I posted it on the Facebook Oric owners page and a bunch of people were like "I want one! Take my money!!" So I'm making it into something that meets their needs. Like I said, it was initially just a proof of concept to see if it was possible (and it was, just)
@@1337Shockwav3 Look up Cumana Reborn and Erebus - no longer leaving you limbless!
The MTX512 was a fascinating machine: it had the ability to display windowed graphics (with BASIC commands, no less) and featured a forerunner of HyperCard.
That is really cool. I would love to see a demo of that.
That's interesting re HyperCard. What was the application called please?
@@clangerbasher It was called "Noddy".
@@thedungeondelver Thanks. I remember back in the day thinking HyperCard was so clever I was expecting the tech to be everywhere. I know in many ways "browsers" and off shoots have brought it to us, but not exactly.
@@thedungeondelver Here it is!!!!!!!!!!!
www.primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/tools/noddy_plus/mtx_noddy_plus.htm
The Oric Atmos has a stunning look, to be honest!
This. I remember seeing it in the shops as a teenager and being amazed by it. I already had a C64 by then and loved that machine. Otherwise I'd have probably tried to convince mum to buy one.
horribly obsolete when it was released, 6502 when everybody else was Z80 at the minimum and 32bit was on the scene, the predecessor Oric 1 wasn't much better, same innards improved case for the Atmos, both used ONLY Teletext graphics, supposed to be CEEFAX machines !!!!!!
The Oric 1 and Oric Atmos looked great. I had tried the Oric 1 at WH Smiths when the computers were running along a shelf for anyone to use. I remember the BASIC Language, Graphics and sound was an upgrade to the Sinclair ZX80/ZX81.
i can remember back in the old days standing looking through the window of the newly opened "computer shop" with my mate munching on a packet of outerspacers dreaming of ALL these machines with their HUGE memories !
I loved typing these basic commands into the Oric when it used to be out on display in Dixons back in the 80s! ZAP, PING, SHOOT and EXPLODE
I did the same in the Boots and WH Smiths. It made me realize the Oric was totally shit. Why? Because all processing would stop while the machine played the arcade sound and then only resume afterwards. Totally absurd. Nothing like the BBC Micro SOUND and ENVELOPE commands that would process sound in parallel with running code and therefore graphics and game playfield.
A feature later robbed by STOS/AMOS game programming BASIC on the 16-bits... :D
@@Drew-Dastardly Ermm, you foolish kid! Oric has SOUND, and PLAY .. and MUSIC .. commands as well .. you just didn't discover them, it seems. Some of the greatest music you will find on the 8-bit machines was made on the Oric, with its independent sound chip supporting multichannel audio.
Man, I remember lusting after that Memotech - purely because the industrial design was so deeply cool.
I did as well. I still have old computer magazines from the period that had an article on it. I must have pored over the pictures like it was a porno magazine.
Ha just looked and gone 'blimey, Id forgot that but I totally wanted it as a kid!"
My first computer was an Oric 1. Set me off on 50+ years of computing and still enjoying my gaming, now retired and 66 years old.
I remember thinking that Memotech was the coolest looking thing ever, I still do :)
I had that Memotech machine way back then... Bought it from flea market with few bucks! Never really "got it", because we had no documentation for it in Finland and there was no internet then to find out more :D I was a curious teen and broke it in to a million pieces and "studied" it's parts :D And thanks to machines like that, still build and fix computers on semi-weekly basis today!
It was sturdy for sure. A solid 1 mm brushed aluminium. Its BASIC had some incredibly awkward commands such as GENPAT (generate pattern) to define a sprite, and you can probably imagine what CTLSPR did. Then, it had a built-in assembler, a built-in debugger, and something called Noddy, which was a language to build text screens. A lot of good ideas, just not always equally well executed, and the manual was big, but not always practical.
During its lifetime, it always struggled: never enough software, hideously expensive hardware, and community support was understandably difficult in the non-connected 1980s.
I remember the adverts in the magazines. It looks so cool. I wanted one badly, but dad bought a commodore plus 4. Which also had bugger all software.
Sadly it's all looks, overall the machine is quite underwhelming.
@@1337Shockwav3 Nah, it's pretty much average for the time it came out in, and probably even a bit above average. Bear in mind that MSX, with exactly the same specs, had yet to come out.
Oric-1 was my first computer (Oric Atmos the 2nd one). The reasons why it worked so well in France are : Same CPU as the Apple ][. RGB output for scart TV. High resolution.
the reason why it's labeled 48K and 68K of ram is that the Rom and the Ram overlay on the same bus adress range.
You can toggle from Rom to ram, and this was used by Tangerine to load the system from floppies. Of course, in normal use, the overlayed part of the ram is useless. The lack of on/off swich was the main cause of failure. The connector was not capable to survive that much hard reset cycles. I learn 6502 machine code on it.
One thing: the RAM overlay *isn't* entirely useless - if you had a micro drive, you could access the full 64k and still have a DOS at hand as well.
The VIA chip had unused lines, it's surprising they didn't use that to page between ROM & RAM.
I was lucky enough to have all those machines in my collection 15+ years ago. I was even lucky enough to have found a Science of Cambridge Mk14 which I paid zero pounds for !! Unfortunately my wife started to get a little unhappy that my collection was migrating from the full garage to the dining table :-( ... ebay got the lot.
I Wish I would of hung onto them now and put the wife on eBay instead lol.
It will be nice to see more on the Memotech and Enterprise machines. Also would be nice to see videos on the Jupiter Ace and Einstein computers which always seem to be left out of collections.
Yes. I actually knew someone who bought an Einstein back in the day.
@@MrDuncl I still have my Jupiter Ace, somewhere. The built-in language was FORTH.
@@MrDuncl The Einstein could actually run MSX software easily, totally compatible... It could also emulate the Spectrum. Dearly wanted one, but it was too expensive.
Really like the fact that it (the Enterprise) has its own built-in joystick. Hope it contained a port for an extra one though, because if that think breaks you would have been fucked if you were into gaming at all.
Wasn't the Einstein technically a Taiwanese computer though
ALL OF THEM! please do videos for all of them, I find all the historical computer stories interesting. Great video as always.
French here. The Oric 1 was my first computer. But in France, to switch the TV to the auxiliary Péritel input (aka SCART), you need to deliver a very well regulated 12V to switch the circuit. And this was a royal PITB, if I may say so, so much so I was using a motorbike battery as no transformer I found was stable enough. All in all, I used the computer way less than I wanted to because of that. The last nail in the coffin was when I was given a big beautiful and very advanced CP/M machine. The Oric became a closet queen in an instant. Still got it, by the way. Also saved an Atmos later, gifted by a family member years later. But what I really wished for from Tangerine was a Stratos. This had me salivating for a while because Minitel compatibility ;-)
Camputers Lynx, Tatung Einstein and Grundy Newbrain deserve their own tributes :)
Great video. More like this please. The first computer I ever saw was a friend's dad's Oric 1, I'll never forget my complete wonderment at seeing a computer - in a house - wow!
excellent episode as always. Great production and presentation RMC
Excellent video. Brought back fond memories, so thank you for that. 😀
OMG - the Memotech MTX512. I remember reading about it in some UK trade magazine back in the day. Ahhh, the memories - thanks for this video! Great stuff!
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing.
Love these thank you for the excellent programme
Excellent video Neil. One thing that makes this video special is you really get a sense of scale of these machines since you’ve sat a 48k Speccy there for comparison. Brilliant idea!
Retro Cave Man definitely one the most informative retro channels. I'd like to see more of the Memotech. I'd never heard of it before this video. Cheers for the upload.
I had an Oric-1. Great machine. I used to sit and program it in my bedroom on our portable TV.
Worked in a computer shop in 1985, peak 8 bit era. Software was basically ZX Spectrum, C64, 1% BBC, 1% everything else. Nobody ever came in for Oric, and we never saw any of the other stuff for sale in software catalogues.
The Timex Sinclair ZX81 was sold by the thousands here in Buenos Aires, later there was also a local company named Czerweny that licensed and sold the ZX81 as well. I programmed my first game in a ZX81 of a friend of mine in the early 80s! I remember I had to keep tweaking the code to avoid running out of memory. Thank you for the great video!
My good friend at the time was obsessed with getting the Oric-1 and it took weeks of talking him into getting the Spectrum. He thanked us later :)
Excellent video guys, I thoroughly enjoyed that. The MTX is a really nicely designed micro!
Neil, you and Keith are great! Another great video taking me back in time! You guys are fab. 👍🏻
Thanks Gaz
The Oric-1 suffered from keys no longer responding, unless pressing harder. I brought an Atmos, used Author to write my school reports. And I still consider it as one of the nicest serious machine at the time. I sold it, replacing it with a Sinclair QL with more memory and more reliable storage.
Great clip...very interesting, would be nice to have seen them boot up and a program loaded. But I really enjoyed this. Great work.😊
I wrote 2 adventure games for the 48k Oric-1, "Starprobe" and "Land of Illusion" (released by Tansoft). I also worked on a game for a pre-production Enterprise, but the project was abandoned before completion. Happy times!! 😁
The Atmos would definitely pique my interest as a video all on it's own - i'd love to see the thing in action. That and the MTX just look so quintessentially 1980's - everything was black, with a red stripe or highlights - fitted with the style perfectly.
Some of the 21st Century Oric software that's been produced would blow our minds if we'd known back in the teenager 80's, that such things were possible. Check out www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games for some examples with screenshots, and if you're interested find yourself an Emulator (there are a few to choose from - my favourite is Oricutron, but ClockSignal is also worth a look) and get an account on oric.org/ to go through the classics. Seriously, if we'd known what the Oric could do back in the day, things would've been quite different .. new graphics modes were discovered and new techniques for exploiting them resulted in some FABULOUS looking games this century.
I remember seeing the Atmos in person when i was a kid and was really impressed by its looks. Still am, it's one of the best looking machines from the 80's !
Check out the Telestrat too!
fantastic episode Neil seeing these machines once again has made my day i wanted all of these back in the day. Memotech knew how to build a computer and the asthetics are perfect, i would like to see an episode dedicated to this micro.......thank you for this production @@@kim@@@
Thanks Kim. Memotech episode coming right up for you sir
That brought back some memories. I bought a kit Microtan 65 at the end of 1980 and expanded it to take floppy discs. It was a dead end so I looked at a lot of other computers before settling on the BBC B.
I remember selling the Oric-1 along with the ZX series of machines, BBC-B, Dragon 32/64 and the Jupiter Ace :D
Those were the days...
I loved this episode! I have experience with five of these lovely old computers. I own a ZX80 (bright white, boxed and in mint condition), a boxed ZX81, a boxed Oric 1, and a boxed Memotech MTX 512 with the Memotech branded DMX-80 printer (also boxed!). I used to own an Atmos back in the day but sold it because I just didn't like it. I much prefer the look of the Oric 1 to be honest. I also have a mint condition, boxed, Jupiter Ace too - would love to see something about this. In fact I have quite a few home computers and associated peripherals from the 1970s and 80s, twenty-one to be precise. My latest acquisition being a Commodore PET 2001-8 from 1977. Great channel Neil, keep up the good work :-)
This is a really cool video! Subscribed!
That Memotech actually kinda looks like if Sinclair designed the Commodore 64...
Amazing episode! Thanks!
I loved the look and feel of the Memotech, it always seemed a solid machine in all senses of the word. I only ever saw them in Laskeys, and never knew anyone that ever actually bought one.
And the Atmos was always a very attractive computer. I never knew that the Atmos was really an Oric-1 in essence, I always assumed there was some kind of reasonable functionality/feature lift.
(I totally would have peeled that sticker off, too).
The Enterprise always came across a bit like the later Sam Coupe - seemed to be a good machine on paper but you never saw them anywhere at all.
Another great video Neil (& Keith!), many thanks!
i love this kinda episodes, bringing back childhood memories
0:29 How... how did everyone resist peeling off that protective film over the years? :o
because it barely got used, prob spent most of its life in a cupboard. Not a lot you can do or want to do with Teletext graphics.
Brilliant video! Please make a video on each of those early 1980s machines!!!
I had the pleasure of getting to play with an Enterprise when I was a kid. At the time I only had access to BBC Micros at school, and a friend of my mum had one of the Enterprise machines. Thanks for covering it, I could never remember what that weirdo micro was I played with occasionally. The joystick on it is a dead give away!
The Memotech, what a fantastic looking device - I've retro-micro envy now! Can we get a full episode, please? I remember the Orics well, friends had them. Of course, the ZXs.....plenty said about them....and plenty of time spent on them too in my school's computer club.
I'm 44 and I still have my Enterprise 128 from my childhood. On Hungary this machine have a fan base. You can buy an SD card adapter, new keyboard membrane, 2 MB RAM expansion and the machine is capable to handling 8 MB of memory. On the expansion port can use floppy controller, IDE HDD controller and many other stuffs. SymbOS have EP 128 support too... I think it's a great machine and I love it. :)
Best version of Gemini Man I've seen. My friend had an Enterprise. As it liked to boast: "With Obsolescence built out!" lol.
Great to see these, I must have been swayed by the unusual in my youth as I waited a year for the Enterprise to be released, before finally giving up and bought an Oric instead, with the terrible keyboard, but I have fond memories as it was the first micro I bought. My parents ran Datapen Microtechnology making lightpens for micro's so I had a dream childhood with C64, Vic 20, BBC, Spectrum, Dragon 32 and my personal favorite Amstrad CPC464, although nothing beats the BBC playing Elite for pure Nostalgia. Ended up with an Atari STFM before the rise of PC clones wiped out this wonderful time for home micros that ran from my mid teens through to my early 20's. Great to see the Enterprise getting a deeper look in recent episodes, and the nostalgia from these is just intoxicating - A big thank you.
Great video, thanks! I'd love to see more about the MTX (it reminds me of my Korg M1 synth!) Also, you must peel the stickers of them whotsits!
Being this close to 100K subscribers must like having an itch you just can't scratch right now 😁
..Don't worry, relief is coming and how well deserved it is.
The Matra Alice was a TRS-80 MC10 in a red case. What made it "French" was that Hachette is a huge publishing house with many magazines and books aimed at teens and young adults. I remember buying "Jeux & Stratégies" mags from France so long ago and it was impossible not to see an ad or two for the Alice. Maybe there was some pressure on the editors to include Alice versions of the game listings at the end of the mags, but my copies of those magazines are long gone so I can't check. :)
And the Moebius artwork...
Hachette is still big in France doing part works of things like reproductions of French Dinky Cars.
As always another of your great videos, I guess UK microcomputer scene was much more interesting than we knew 😀
Awesome selection of hardware, always wanted the Enterprise but never come across one in decent enough condition. And great meeting and chatting to you at Revival Neil.
Would love to see something on the Camputers Lynx series of machines. Really enjoyed this ‘Show n Tell’ 👍
Amazing how competitive the micro market was in uk, in 1980's.
Most of us clearly would never of heard of these machines, you showed here, so fascinating to see them.
Nice to see people want to keep them as part of historical record for techs.
I remember reading an article on the Enterprise in a physics class in college in early 83. Spec blew me away - too bad they took 2 years to launch it
Yup - I read perhaps the same article which blew me away. So now I own an Enterprise 128 !
22:32 That the thing about driving down the price, it made it possible for people to get involved with computers and upgrade as their wallet allowed and preferences allowed, and I think that's the key to it's enduring success.
Absolutely, especially when nobody you knew owned a computer. In 1980 my new Honda motorbike cost £500. Something like a TRS80 was over half that. Getting the price under £100 made buying a computer far easier to justify. As there was no real computing press in 1980 Sinclair advertised to Electronics enthusiasts in magazines like Practical Electronics, in which he had previously advertised "HiFi", Calculators and Watches.
I remember having a Memotech 16K ram-pack for the ZX81, but I never knew about their MTX computer. Can't wait to see more about it!
Really interesting episode, all the computers that we forgot about!
For what it's worth, I love the sound of squeaky polystyrene
Fantastic, the history of microcomputers made in the United Kingdom is quite rich and even today I still have one of the biggest global successes, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and ZX-81 and their locally manufactured clones..
Great stuff, Neil. You are a lucky chap my friend...i'd love to get to play with a few of those rare machines.
very special channel
thank u ❤
As a ZX81 owner, I lusted after most of these to different degrees. I remember for a while particularly wanting an MTX.
I was 13 years old when the Enterprise was launched and I remember reading about the specs in various magazines of the time and wanting one. Fortunately, I went in the direction of a BBC B Model 7 with various peripherals and never looked back. Very interesting times in the home computer community though. I was a member of a small (sub 1000 population) town who had a “computer club” and we had all sorts including Sharp MZ-80K, MZ-700/800, Tandy TRS-80, Commodore Pet/64/Electron and Oric Amos. Also, various Sinclair machines and later Amstrad machines. Good times!
good presentation ! thanks
I like them all! Ooooh, do I like them! Do full episodes about all of them!
Lot of oric atmos models ended up in ex Yugoslavia. it was mostly sold to schools there and was known as nova 64. Besides new logo, everything else was the same. It was fairly expensive so not a lot of people had it. We mostly bought spectrums and C64's smuggled from Germany
You can tell it's an Oric 1 16k by the fact it has a 48k sticker on the back, lol. The Atmos was the rarer of the 2 but you still saw quite a few of them, I worked in an early computer shop, for younger viewers a shop was like an online store but IRL, IE it was an actually building were you could walk in and 'buy' stuff and take it home with you, completely offline, IKR mind blown. But we did repairs and we got quite a few of both the Oric-1 and the Atmos, if memory serves we did sell some game for the Oric computers, I think they were compatible, it was a long time ago. The shop was City Software in Lime Street Liverpool, if anyone remembers it.
I loved my Oric-1 and then Atmos. I wrote some good stuff on those, really important programming experience that then became a career, and the Atmos had a really excellent keyboard.
Still got those old tapes around? Dig 'em out and send them our way: forums.defence-force.org/
Oric Atmos 48k is still quite sexy looking machine. Had one in childhood and it's Basic was great for programming, like in MSX which i got too. Later Oric's dram-chips failed in storage, swapped those for new ones and it worked again. Sold maybe ten years ago for 70eur if i remember right. I live in Finland.
I live near swindon, have visited the museum before and loved how much stuff they have there.
I remember loving the look of the Oric-1 when I saw it in on display in Dixon's in the 80's. But ended up buying a Tatung Einstein as my first computer, which i used for a few years until the Amiga 500 came out. Happy days ! (I'm wondering if the Tatung was underrated in its day, as I thought it was a superb machine, but pretty much nobody remembers it !! ).
My mom used to have an Oric 1. It just sat in a cupboard through the late 90s and early 2000s lol.
I love all of these, and would happily welcome future videos on any of them. Or you know, all of them. ;)
The MTX is just sexy, I'd give a lot to own one.. Do that one first, please.
I've always had a soft spot for the Atmos as well. Clearly 30 years ahead of the red'n'black "gamer" aesthetic, haha.
The ZX-80 will remain one of my favorite machines ever. It's so impossibly bad it boggles the mind. Bad in a good way, that is. I have the deepest respect for Sinclair, and how they managed to build and ship such incredibly cheap machines. They must've had some serious engineering talent to pull that off.
Great video, looking forwards to seeing all of them in action. :)
A friend had the ZX80. I wasn't impressed. As soon as the flicker free ZX81 was announced we both ordered one. He then sold on the ZX80 for £30.
I love that MTX! The style looks like you could release it today and it would still be a fresh look!
Nice video thanks, it would be interesting to see a demonstration of some of these machines running a few games and software.
I remember all of these from back in the day, though the ZX81 was the first I got to play with at a friend's house. 23:11 The one that stood out in my memory was the Enterprise 128, saw that in "Fox's music store" at Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham, they sold musical equipment for years but tagged onto the 8-bit computer boom and stocked home computers for a while. I saw that in the shop as a child and was fascinated by it at the time, but never knew anyone that owned one.
Love the style of the enterprise,but all of them actually look great,just subscribed to Keith's channel too.
Ah the squeak of polystyrene. Never annoying Neil. It's the sound of memories. Loved this video. You always widen my understanding of what came out aside the mainstream machines.
This channel is always a treasure.
I don't disagree with the Orci 1's "superb styling" claim, looks very sleek and elegant in my eyes.
Yep, feature vids of the individual machines would be great!
I remember seeing an Oric 1 in a shop display cabinet here in Newcastle Australia back in 83. I would have loved to own it or any other system at the time.
We had a Memotech MTX in our computer class at school; in hindsight I wish I had paid more attention to it as I never ever used it!
I would love to see a future episode on this machine, certainly gets my vote.
Hi, I remember drooling over the Enterprise, when it was called the Elan, when I saw it in Your Computer Magazine. Thought it would be the computer for me. By the time it came out had moved on. The built in joystick was for the young game playing me a great selling point. Would be interested in seeing it in action so I can see what I missed.
You're not alone. I wanted it immediately... however, coming from a 'larger family', it was quite impossible. The price for it here in Malta was quite higher than the quoted British prices, which was daft. Eventually it was a flop here. I moved from the TI-99/4a, to an MSX, and then to the C64... On both Z80 and 6502 I learned assembly language easily.... In my opinion, it still looks stunning enough today.
@@metalheadmalta Don't let the looks decieve you ... the keyboard looks quite good, but is in fact on par with the zx81 due to keys getting constantly jammed and bouncing. Technically still a severely underrated machine. If it had come out 1-2 years earlier I can definitely see it compete among the popular commodore, atari, sinclair and amstrad machines. Sadly it ended up as a sidenote.
@@1337Shockwav3 There are quite a few of these available on the Hungarian market, in case anyone is interested .. it was a popular system in that country for a while.
Black+red coloring some 30 years before it became trendy on computers :D I totally dig that design of atmos :D
The Enterprise. I remember when it came out, reviewed in "Your Computer" magazine - they said it was out of date. They also reviewed the Oric 1 on it's release, noting how the manual was "obviously written by someone who'd never laid eyes on an Oric" and often "misleading or simply wrong".
In those years, you could expect a new PC to be released every week, and disappear within 6 months. But you never knew which would hang around - the Dragon 32, the BBC B and the Acorn Electron all took a long time to fade away.
@@Riskteven It wasn't marketed as a business machine, but to home programming hobbyists, and gamers.
Though IIRC it's display, of light green text on a dark green background, does reek of 80s office terminals.
So this may be a mis-marketed hybrid.
Absolutely. Companies with no experience in computers wanted to jump on the Bandwagon. The Oric was financed by British Car Auctions ! Even the big manufacturers were capable of blunders with machines like the Commodore Plus 4 and the Sinclair QL. Back then only Bill Gates understood the importance of Software Compatibility.
@@MrDuncl Didn't know that about the British Car Auctions funding Oric.. got more details somewhere?
Enterprise definitely one of my favourite computers , love the power of the thing and the styling.
The Elan/Flan Enterprise; built in Perth. Scotland. We had a working 3.5" disk drive and I remember we built a dedicated word processor from an Enterprise board and an old terminal - worked surprisingly well using the built in word processor package. As they say in the article, a great computer if it had come out 18 months earlier. I bought a couple of the leftover machines plus a cub monitor from the assembly line when it closed down but unfortunately they've long gone. I still come across the odd enterprise part in my scrap collection though. Glad a few machines still survive intact!
My Oric-1 survived a glass of squash being tipped over it, albeit the keys were a bit stiff afterwards.
Years later I bough an Atmos from a mate and do recall swapping some chips around.
I still have both and so would love to see something done with those two
Excellent! The only one that ever made it to the States and made an impact was the ZX81 - which was the Timex Sinclair 1000 over here. My grandfather had one which O inherited. It has not been turned on since 1987 probably, maybe earlier.
We had our own machines over here that made a splash on the eighties - TI99/4A, Commodore, Atari, TRS-80, Apples... Those were the machines to have here.
Of course there was crossover, especially with the Commodore, but it is amazing that there were so many differences, too.