Oric 1 System Review | Nostalgia Nerd
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- The Oric-1 was an 8 bit micro from 1983 produced by Oric Products International Ltd and Tangerine Computer Systems. Released as a competitor to the Sinclair Spectrum, it never gained the popularity it perhaps deserved, but still gained enough momentum for a strong fan base.
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I nearly bought one of these because my paper round wages were taking ages to save,but my grandparents bought me a ZX SPECTRUM 48K and I fondly remember them to this day for buying it.
A detailed history of the oric 1. I have fond memories of the Oric as it was our first computer. Mushroom mania and Scuba dive were great games that I remember. It had bugs that were quite fun features, like Esc and Del which corrupted the screen in colourful patterns the more times you alternated pressing them.
It was a great little computer though, in my opinion better than the speccy in many ways.
When the first batch of these turned up for us to sell, they all had the wrong plug on the computer end of the power supply brick. I had to re-solder replacement ones on.
I remember a bug in Oric BASIC that when you converted an integer to a string it stuck the display attribute for green at the front of it so you had to use MID$(2,...) to strip that off if you wanted it to be non-green! I quite enjoyed the Oric though. It got a decent port of Hunchback from Ocean that I played a lot of. Taught myself 6502 assembler on it. The BASIC had some nice sound functions that were fun to play with.
ha HA! I wasn't good enough to solve that one so my card game was mainly green. I remember using 6502 to hook to the keyboard interrupt and slow the game Xenon down, we thought there might be a prize at the end of it.
In1975 a psychic told me to invest in a computer company with a fruit related name. Let me tell you now, I have no regrets of my investment in tangerine
I remember we had one of these in about 1985, and my five year old self patiently watching my mum write a basic program... a game... from the manual.. for me to play. After her hours of work, the damn thing had some kind of breakdown , and never worked again. And that was my entire experience of computers in childhood :( until 1995 when my mate got a SNES :).
Hard luck!
I came in touch with Oric (Atmos) much later after he was officially discontinued, probably around 1987. It was produced by the name Pravez 8D and came with nice and firm keyboard. There was a manual with it, containing full list of BASIC commands. It was sold with zero peripherals since it was targeted as "home" - you must use a TV and cassette player.
After it was released, a guy named Borislav Slavchev made hardware and software so it can work with 5"floppy drive from Apple II (know as Pravetz 8x). The hardware included option for the software to switch the overshadowed 16k of RAM by ROM. So we could actually use the all 64k RAM. And then a BOOM of software developed for Oric flourish. Ahh memories, memories ...
Cool video! I started with a ZX81 and then went to the Oric-1. I still have 3-4 units tucked away in the basement. Thanks for bringing back fond memories!
Incredible that they had the gall to claim that they had an ergonomic and professional keyboard in their advert!
Not often the Tiger gets a mention - I've got an HH Tiger! Bit of an odd machine with Z80, 6809 and a UPD7220 NEC graphics processor. Built in modem too - my first foray online was onto a Prestel based system with the Tiger. The graphics were impressive back in the day!
Ping zap shoot explode.
The above will mean nothing to anyone who never used one of these.
I wrote that part of the Oric firmware!!
@@paulkaufman2754 Those commands gave instant gratification as a youngster in the local department store where they had an Oric setup amongst all the other home computers.
We never got any further than that!
@@paulkaufman2754 when I found out that studying maths to become an academic was too hard for me, I had to get a job in a boring insurance company, except that PC they were not interested in had BASIC on it as learned from ORIC, and I wrote a load of programs that did all my work for me - I had a 1 man cottage industry IT department going, until alas, high powered types came and stole most of the work, failed to actually do much, company bust! I did dabble in some sound to annoy people I recall.
Wow, incredibly detailed story. Though I'm a real micro history geek, I didn't know most of these details about ORIC! :) Kudos Sir.
+Emmanuel Florac Thanks muchly :)
Oric 1 and Atmos were my first computers, good memories. Nice video.
+Mathias Moser Thanks!
Too bad the Oric 1 had that shit keyboard
The Atmos was nice though
My dad started off with a ZX81, which he still has, before moving on to the Oric 1. He then gave the Oric 1 to my uncle and moved on to the Oric Atmos. I remember playing a lot of games on the Atmos before he upgraded again to an Atari ST around 1986 or 87.
There were some good games for the Oric Atmos.
Well put together mate!
Yeah the ORIC was mad in France, people loved it.
The Amstrad was pretty popular in France too, If I am not mistaken
I had no idea! This channel has introduced me to the spectrum, the atom and now the oric! Never saw any of those machines back in the day in Ottawa Canada
Great review on the Oric-1 and my brother only last year managed to get a working one.Thumbs up!
By far your best video so far. More of this, please.
Oric-1 was my first computer and I loved it. I don't remember keyboard as that bad and I thought it was better than Spectrums. Luckily there was so little software available for it I had to learn to write my own. As a result I wrote copy program, assembler compiler and bunch of games. Great memories... and thanks for the review to bring those back. I did play around with Oric Nova (Atmos as it was called in Yugoslavia) but by that time I already switched to Amiga.
At 14, I got my first computer, which was a Speccy, which I waited 3 months for delivery, and when It arrived, it lasted less than a fortnight. Disgusted in the way that only pubescent nerds can, I sent it back for a cash refund. I then invested in an Oric 1 (purchased in-store, avoiding shipping delays). I had 4 fail on me before the shop ran out of stock and gave me the money back.
I then gave up on owning my own computer for the next three years and used my rep as a nerd to access those of my more affluent schoolmates, which also got me a fair bit of nooky.
Just watched this again. Very well presented, so thanks!
Thanks for a great vid. I got the original Oric for Xmas when I was 13ish. My Dad later told me he wanted to get the spectrum but he couldn’t get 1 and couldn’t get any games for the Oric either. I was really happy but really disappointed…..cmon I only wanted to play games! But with no games I opened the manuals. By the end of Xmas day I was in love with programming. …..which changed the course of my life.
Just found mine, with a few games, in the garage.....🤓
I believe ORIC was also chosen because of its similarity to the name ORAC which was the name of the advanced computer in Blake's 7.
My Oric was almost as grumpy as Orac.
Great Vid, i had the Oric1 48K as my first PC, i remember sitting learning basic on Christmas day in 1983, as i had no games for it, as a platform, it was vastly superior to the ZX Spectrum, in every way, there was just no good software developed for it, its sound capabilities where fantastic, and you got used to the keyboard after a while, i had a Spectrum, then C64 after this, and while games where better coded, nothing could touch my first ever computer, an Oric1 :)
+ToryglenBoy It's such an obscure little gem. The sound did impress me hugely though, and I bet if it had taken off it could have taken on the Speccy easily
Sadly, the keyboard sucked ass. Chicklet keyboards are awful. The Atmos had a nice keyboard though
You've peaked my interest and killed it for owning one all in one review. Brillant!
+Lorfarius I try my hardest :D
People are still producing new software for the Oric, just like they do for the 64 and Spectrum. Quite a small group, but some nice work produced in recent years including an Elite clone called 1337 (get it?). The true potential hidden within this machine has only been realised in recent years and it was technically capable of games as good as anything on the Spectrum - it just lacked the widespread programming knowledge to unlock it back in the day. Any machine is only as good as the software available for it.
@@Nostalgianerd and you prevented me from playing brawl stars! Fascinating as orics were also listed as "what's on the market" in the first issue of "Računari..." when i was in another country :D
My first computer and I used to love it. Never had any bugs on it. I used to have a cassette player to load the games. it was taking between 30 minutes and 45 minutes to load a game each time you wanted to play it. You could write your own games in basic. I wrote a rpg based on the book Deathtrap Dungeon by Ian Livingstone. All my friends used to love it as it was sightly better than the ZX81 that some of my friends had.
Bought one of these when they came out, the keys were a nightmare, and sometimes got hooked under the case itself, so you had to release them with a screwdriver.
That said, it was actually a pretty good first computer, I learned 6502 programming on it, and even still have the Firmware Guide somewhere.
The UK market was so different from the US one in the '80s. In the US market, computers needed to be taken seriously so they weren't often advertised as budget game machines. Instead, they were usually touted for their business/home office and expansion abilities even though 90% of them would be used solely for games. Also, everyone started saving up for floppy drives the moment they got it home. Cassettes were generally considered to be a stopgap solution. Most of the machines in the frenzied UK market were just off-the-shelf implementations built by a few people. I've always had more of a soft spot for custom silicon but that required serious funding.
A bit like a US fridge is half the size of a London studio apartment, that sort of stuff.
I remember going to a Computer Fair with my boss, who was diversifying into home computers from renting video tapes. I had an Oric-1 demonstrated to me. Although I was impressed with the capabilities of the Oric-1 but it was too expensive, in comparison to the ZX Spectrum, and didn't have a decent games base.
My opinion is that it was potentially a good computer without the support it needed to be a real commercial success. A friend of mine had an Atmos, a retailer upgraded him from an Oric-1 when the bugs became apparent. Like any other Oric owners I knew, he eventually gave in and bought a Spectrum. I don't remember the Oric-1 or Atmos being as enthusiastically received as you imply.
Interesting computer. I recently read his story on Wikipedia and wanted to know what the software and games were like. It seems that the games were very basic, simple. I would like to have an Oric 1 for fun.
I was working on a Saturday job in an electrical store for the first Christmas Oric was on sale (probably 1983), and we sold absolute bucketloads of Orics. Every single one of them came back as faulty -- there was a queue of people just wanting to get a refund. Normally my job was to test everything that came back, to ensure it was actually faulty, but there were so many people that my boss told me not to bother and to just give them their money back!
Great video on a system I am toying with getting at some point.
That's the machine on which I played my first video game ever (I think it was Xenon 1), in 1983. So it has a huge nostagical value for me ;)
My father quickly switched to the Atmos.
Can't believe I threw my Oric-1 away about 25yrs ago
me too 'that won't become worth anything' I told my Mum
Great review! No one I knew had an Oric, which was probably good as they would've been shunned even more than my Dragon 32 owning friend :-)
there was a worse one that came out that used a language called FORTH, it was purchased by a friend-of-a-friend, who actually put it in the bin - forget its name though!
@@deighton2002 Jupiter Ace, perhaps? Those are very collectable nowadays.
I bloody love your channel!
awesome channel, so well researched!
I love this channel but am amazed at the disconnect between the US and UK back in the 80s early 90s technology. My parents had a C64 before I got my NES in like 86 but never heard of the spectrum or oric.
Great Video as usual.Really cool machine i always thought of it as a more professional and "serious"machine,it was very well known but could not really take off because of some mistakes in policies and because of the tought competition at the time with the monstrous success of the ZxSpectrum and the C64 a bit later on
I originally heard the name ORIC was derived from ORAC, the know-it-all computer from Blake's 7, which was still popular in the early 80s.
i had this as a kid and had no idea what to do with it. except "print hello"
I learned the BASIC programming language with it! ...
Very interesting video - I had never heard of Tangerine of Oric before!
I had as much of the Oric 1 as I ever wanted by playing with the one on display in WHSmith. :-)
10 years later I was unimpressed to find that the library in Coventry city centre had a computer section consisting mostly of an Oric 1 user manual.
I had one of these suckers. My unit was faulty. It was overheat or something, and slowly different keys would stop registering. Tried adding heat sinks and what not, but no luck. This was back in late 80's. My uncle brought it from UK and gave it to me. No tape drive... But a book with 100 BASIC games that I wanted to type in and play, but couldn't.
My mum's catalogue sent me one of these instead of a Spectrum I had ordered. I was impatient to own a computer so couldn't be arsed to send it back and wait for the Speccy to come back in stock. After discovering how badly it was supported I decided to send it back and learn to have patience until the Speccy's came back in stock. Plus, the kids at school were taking the piss because I had an Oric.
Sweet Judge Dredd sticker on an even more awesome TV.
I had the Oric 1 briefly, great machine apart a couple of minor issues:
1) the power supply cable had to be re soldered numerous times.
2) in the graphics mode, when you typed the circle command, the circle was actually an oval.
3) when loading a program that I typed in BASIC, sometimes it would fail to load. A number of lines would be substantially reduced with the last line number being of the form
21845 UU UUUUUU...
Any attempt to delete the line crashed the machine, only resolution was to reset the power.
Apart from that, I thought it was better than the Spectrum.
Had one. Loved it. Programmed my own games as finding oric games on sale was not easy. I really regret throwing machine into trash several years later...
I had the Oric-1, wich I made into the Atmos with a kit I bought.
the Atmos keyboard was a dream to type on compared to the Oric-1 keys.
*which...
wich isn't a word
I can not believe I've only just subbed , sorry mate been watching these for ages
I worked for Apricot for a while converting programs to run on it. I also worked on the ACT800 if you have heard of it. I also worked on the BBC Electron which was pretty poor as the BBC had missed out the teletext mode.
This is It!!! The very first computer i ever have!!! Looool. Mine used with casette.......
Brutal!!!! Mi primer ordenador.... Era imposible hacer nada con el...Lo tenía mi padre ( yo tenía 8-9 años..... ) Un predecesor por meses del spectrum looooooll
I had one, Loved it!
I had an ORIC 1 and many hours programming/playing games!!!!
Great review and fascinating stuff. I only ever had the chance to try out an Oric-1 once, and I can still remember that freaky keyboard, but even so there was just something about it.
So if Oric had been allowed to create their IBM compatible they might have become the early Dell...
This is really cool! Great video, are these particularly expensive at all?
+LianneJW1912 Abooot 100 English pounds
ah...scuba dive...by Durrell software...a teacher at our boarding school (Whitstone head school in Devon) Called Dave, was friends with the head of that software house and kids used to visit the studios in Taunton in Somerset and return back to school with armfuls of free games!
Pedantically, the Oric doesn't have two graphics modes in the traditional sense, it's more like a normal graphics subsystem and an Antic/Copper glued together - each byte that is read contains *either* some graphics *or* a mode/colour change (and therefore, implicitly, a blank set of pixels). So, other than in the final three lines, you can intermix text and graphics sections at your will.
Interesting light review of the machine. Thanks.
It is a shame that you do not give any mention of the active developments in the Oric scene. There are many demos and released games which dwarf anything that was released commercially back in the day and are definitely worth a mention.
These machines are not dead. ;)
How could you review the Oric without those 3 magic words - ping ! zap ! explode !
I just had a mildly strange experience with a "Tangerine Oric"..."console". So I looked it up and apparently it was this!?
This was my first computer, we got it second hand when I was about 7 or 8, I remember typing out code for a game from one of those make your own game books.Luckily it worked first time.
A few years later I nagged my parents into getting me a C64.
+Technoprobe Hahaha, a story many Oric owners are familiar with
Great videos ... especially like the way you reviewed the machine in context of the time it was being sold.
Are you planning to do a video on the Jupiter Ace? I might be wrong but I think what had LISP rather a BASIC interpreter.
It had a FORTH interpreter.
@@fisterB ... that’s it, spot on. Thx
Thanks, never heard if before.
Damn, Zorgon's Revenge, I had forgotten that one. Used to own one. A sturdy machine, my infant brother used to stand on it on occasion.
At least when typing in a programme I could type 'PRINT' rather than 'PRINT RINT'; something that always happened on the Spectrum because I forgot their stupid one key press function thing. I really liked my Oric-1.
I was at college early 1983 when I bought a Spectrum and a friend got an Oric-1. Felt so bad for him, the Oric-1 had to be a lot better than the Spectrum to make up for the available software on the ZX platform, and it was not. I remember it had the BASIC keywords, EXPLODE and ZAP. Woo hoo!
I remember reading somewhere the name ORIC was a modification of the name of the tetchy computer ORAC from blakes 7 .
I thought that was the case too, but they said it was a part-anagram of 'Micro' - however admitting they had based it on ORAC would leave them open to paying cash to the BBC, so any good lawyer would advise you not to admit such a thing, and have deniability up your sleeve. A bit like the girl on GTA5 who looks like Lindsay Lohan is 'nothing to do with her', it's a paid model, who happened to look like her.
I wrote all the sound functions in this machine! Zap, Ping, Shoot, Explode - ahh joy
I had Oric Nova 64, but truth to be tell i still can remember where did it ended up , i cant find it . Although never did used it that much as a kid cause i was to young i guess, played it for a while but that was about it ,
Still after all this time i do remember it fondly with that funky black and red color scheme and a huge brick of a power supply that when touched could be easily mistaken for some kind of a cooker as it was hot as hell itself .
+Idimi Dodjimi God, yeah, some power supplies back then used to literally be too hot to touch. Somewhat worrying now, but then it was like.... meh
My brother had one of these we used to play harrier strike and rat splat on it happy days
I'd forgotten about the oric :)
I had one. The sound was good, no joystick easy, and the video in hires had an issue not shown in the video of requiring 8 pixels to the left of any colouring to be used for the colour attribute, which was a bit annoying making up games and having "holes" if you wanted colour.
The music you used is very distracting, the channel Retrospective Perspective used it for all his reviews for a couple of years. All I can think of when i hear it is that!
But great review anyway, I have'nt even heard of this computer before this, so I feel enlightened now :)
+Stefan Johansson I only tend to use a piece of music once, so have no fear
+Nostalgia Nerd Yeah but now Swingout Sister will be playing in my mind all night now HAHA
+Kee Lo Shakespeare's Sister? XD
I agree - really excellent content spoiled for me by the horrible music which sounds like a faulty lavatory cistern gurgling away
Year after Oric went bust, one company from now-day Slovenia (then Yugoslavia) bought batch of leftover stock of Oric Atmos micros, re-branded them as Oric Nova 64 and sold them as "domestically" built computers mostly schools. Original Oric software was almost impossible to get by, though there were couple of domestically built games and programs (mostly in BASIC).
brilliant channel btw :)
+Paul B Aaaa thank-you!
Nice review.
What's the song that plays at the end of the video?
Great video, thanks! Mind your captions though, kb != KB.
this is an...interesting computer. Graphics are nice and sharp and the basic is actually decent
Happy memories, I chose the Oric 1 above the spectrum because I wanted to be different and I hated my ZX 81. Alas following the instructions in the Oric 1 manual to tune the colour Using the trim pot I blew the motherboard after a brief argument with the laskys sales chap They replaced it with the Atmos, for me. I had that for years even turning it into a drum machine for a while.
Shame you can’t share picture in comments on this platform as I found a picture of my pre Atari STFM setup with Analogue synth drum machine and the Oric Atmos centre stage.
Oric1 16KB became my first computer in 1984 - could not afford the c64 nor Spectrum. So i was left lonly. I typed some basic game from a friends basic book. F.ex. Maze, Later I got an book for Oric programming games - here I punshed in Lunar Lander, Chopper lifter, and some other games and it ones happend I touched the power contact (lost power) and I had to retype the hole program since I did not save it to cassette. AAARRRGGGG ..... 5 years later I bought an AMIGA500 and could copy games from friends = Great time !!!
LOL That Rat Splat was brilliant.
That keyboard looks like nightmare
I didn't own an Oric but I'd read enough computer magazines back in the day to stroll into Dixons on a saturday afternoon and type -
10 SHOOT
20 GOTO 10
RUN
Then saunter out of the shop looking all innocent.
While the Oric-1 has quite a bad keyboard (there's way worse tho), the keyboard on the Atmos is among one of the very best I've experienced on an 8/16bit machine - seriously I think that one is only surpassed by the mighty Model M on the IBM PC.
Hans Meier The Atmos looked the business too, totally 1984-ish.
Hans Meier Agree! I actually still have my Atmos (and I had the first PC as well!). Glad to have met you, with similar history!
I'm sorry ... I was born in 1985 and my first 8bit computer was a C64 in 2006, the first real computer I had was a Pentium in 1997 ;) I repair 8bit computers as a hobby/sidejob tho, so I could catch up quite well (Camputers Lynx anyone?).
The Atmos keyboard felt and looked the part. The Acorn Electron keyboard was right behind it. Amazing keyboards.
My first computer! Great! ......
The UK government should really invest and solidify the UKs advantage in microcomputers and become an economy based on being a high tech front runner! Or they could just cut down on regulations for banks and earn easy money by all the financial institutions moving in. Well I guess ARM as a technology has been a UK success story that had its roots in this age, with global impact for the decades to come. But it's a shame there was no real widespread software development culture to sustain tech growth beyond the 80s.
moved to the us sadly
Problems the UK had in developing software:
- Lower wages and higher VAT in the UK make it more difficult to afford powerful computing equipment.
- Smaller housing. Having to share living space means less at-home working space. Harder to program when your younger siblings want their turn on the computer. No garages to start companies in either.
That's crazy they didn't call it CRIMO Then it would have been a full anagram of MICRO
Good video this. I used to love and hate my Oric 1 for the reason you showed in the video. The faulty program saving was real arse. But graphically it was pretty good for the time. Another story of a technically superior product losing the race.
If you don't mind sharing, what is the source of that 3D animation at 0:36?
+Kandi Gloss It's a Honeywell Bull Computer advert > th-cam.com/video/uoiADDoyK7I/w-d-xo.html they did a whole series of them.
Oric is a computer. Orek is also a vacuum cleaner. 😀
At the time of the Oric, bugs were rare (in what was found in the trade, not in what individuals programmed). But already at the time, Microsoft was designing a Basic with a serious bug. There have always been problems with Microsoft. :(
Oric was full of bugs, as mentioned in comments here - even a few hours testing should have found some of them, it smacked of the creator having giving his compiler a quick test only. mind you, presumably getting a machine together with a ROM to test was no quick process.
@@deighton2002 I think ROM development was done with RAM instead so it wasn't that hard for the developers. It was Microsoft that was bad. The Oric suffered as a result. I did not see this kind of problem on the computers of my friends or of my family (other brands than Oric) during the C64, CPC and Amiga era.
After Apple sued and was sued ad nauseam, they did indeed come out with a shiny new case.
I have the HH Tiger mentioned at 1:47. I must make a video while it is still working and while the demo programs on floppy still load.
Did you ever do anything on the Jupiter Ace?
Not yet. I need to get hold of one
I had one when I was 16 yrs old, and I have to admit that it was a huge disappointment. I sold it soon and started to save money for the next machine that became a HP Vectra AT (a friend's parent had access to HP trade fair surplus machines) that carried me well through Uni.
never heard of the Oric 1, great review though :)
+Odd pod It's a marvel of 8 bit electronica! Thanks!