The Oric Pages

By Kenneth Bernholm

The Oric-1 computer was created by Tangerine Computer Systems in 1982 and succeeded by the Oric Atmos in 1984. The two computers has identical hardware but the Atmos sports a striking red/black colour scheme, a Stackpole keyboard, and an upgraded ROM. A little over 200.000 units were sold and in 1985, while struggling financially, Tangering announced the Oric Stratos which would retain hardware compatibility but add more memory and ports. The Stratos did happen but under the Oric Telestrat name and produced by the french company Eureka who bought Tangerine that same year. The Telestrat sold around 6.000 units and an Oric Telestrat 2 was in the works when Eureka shut down Oric development for good in late 1987.

The Oric is based on a MOS 6502 CPU and a 6522 VIA, 48 KB RAM (actually 64 KB), 16 KB ROM (which shadows the upper 16 KB RAM), an AY-3-8910 sound chip, and the HCS10017 ULA which controls memory and clock signals as well as RGB video and tape input/output. The computer also has an IEEE 1284 parallel port and an expansion port which is primarily used for attaching disk drives. Both the hardware and the ROM is very well documented making it an excellent platform for tinkering.

These are some of my Oric projects: