The tape loading bug you're referring to didn't affect the Oric-1, it affected the early versions of the Oric Atmos, and was silently patched with a new version of the (new !) Atmos ROM. I never had too much problems loading tapes on my Oric-1, it seems many of the problems were rather originated by poor tape duplication in the very early days, which persisted for a while with some games companies (i noticed that by tranferring tapes to files for emulators) Interestingly, I also own a Pravetz 8D model, and actually have never been able to load anything on it, despite many many tries.
There was also an issue with the factory using incorrectly marked resistors on the circuit board. This messed up the signal coming from the tape ports. It was fixed later on.
The Oric line of computers used the AY-3-8912 which came in a DIP28 package and only exposes one GPIO port rather than the more expensive (at the time) AY-3-8910 which was packaged in DIP 40 and exposed both GPIO ports. The silicon inside was exactly the same however.
I wrote some of my undergraduate comp-sci projects on an Oric 1. Never had problems with the tape, but I had to play with interrupts to get the printer to work. That said, I managed to put together a nice wire-frame 3d graphics package which plotted on the MCP-40. That 4-colour printer/plotter was a real gem.
i remember these and all the others the problem at the time was price and availability many were in shops but not actually for sale , you would have to wait . and for someone like me who had spent the better part of two years saving up through endless jobs on the market and paper rounds waiting a few months possibly six wasn't going to happen so it was either Sinclair or commodore who both had units actually in the shops AND a good deal of software to either buy or copy from magazines it was a shame as many of the others seemed to be at least as good if not better
Interesting content :) Regarding the Stratos/Telestrat, I think there's some confusion. "Stratos" was the original plan for the Atmos successor when it was still a British company. "Telestrat" is basically what the French company came up with when they bought Oric. This "Telematic-Stratos" was a way to adapt the product to work better on the French market, by adding a way to connect to the local Minitel (the French equivalent of Prestel) and run your own telematic server on the machine. I don't think there were ever plans for both a Stratos and a Telestrat, just the same machine before and after. Trivial: The Pravetz 8D on the photo is my own, I believe it's probably the first one who made it to France, I happened to have a colleague from Bulgaria who had a friend back there who managed to find a machine for me :)
Thanks for your valuable input, it was a real minefield sorting through all the information I found on different sites and the stuff after Tangerine was quite sketchy at best, so glad to be educated :-)
Excellent Video. I didn't know Oric Nova was official deal, I thought it is a clone. Oric Atmos (not sure about Oric-1) had 64k RAM (not 48k as advertised in magazines). Pravetz 8D floppy disc controller had extra hardware to enable the hidden 16k by software. In fact the DOS was in that part so almost zero penalty on "normal" RAM. BTW Pravetz 8D had cherry mechanical keyboard (the best way to use Oric). Also Pravetz didn't make disk drives for Oric. Somebody (very famous at the time) made a disc controller that could use Apple II floppy drives and OS that is Apple DOS 3.3 compatible (on file level, not software). What you see in the picture is Bulgarian clone of Apple II floppy drive made for Pravetz 82 (an actual Apple II clone).
I have two Orics now because one is slightly broken. Something odd I noticed is how it doesn't seem to have any games written past 1985. At least none of the 20 or so games I have for it.
As detailed in the video, the Oric was pretty much dead by '85, there is some really good modern homebrew however like Stormlord, Skooldaze, Space 1999, Oricium and Impossible Mission.
That one is a bit strange! I also read that it was taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet, as a corruption of Yorick. I can only assume that is because Yorick was a jester/entertainer.
I've been an Oric user since 1983, and in Oric clubs since 1995, and have never heared about Orac thing. I did hear and read about micro almost anagram though.
@@andyukmonkey I would say early tapes duplication quality, and different tape players quality or settings. That can't exclude a bad hardware batch, but I bought my Oric-1 in june 1983 (sales began in 1982 but the actual machine was released in 1983 it seems), and beside occasional bad tapes and tricky volume control, never had problems loading programs.
that "incompatible crap" as you ignorantly put it created a vibrant scene in the 80s for customer choice and price points. MSX was rubbish and a flop even in Japan against Nintendo with that scum bag Gates trying to monopolise the market back then. Morons like you now I suppose love that only 3 or 4 globalist monopolies control what you use and buy, like the mindless sheep you are. The 8 bit choice in the UK during the 80s were the best times for computing and ironic that you watch YT videos on such retro machines which still work today, 40years later and provide joy to many. It has created a cottage industry of modern hardware add ons to improve performance as well as giving people a paid vocation on YT with channels dedicated to such "incompatible crap"!!!!!
Yes handing Microsoft dominance of a world wide market would have been the smart idea It's not like unique micros across the UK and US lead to any technological advancement. It was just incompatible crap Absolute abject nonsense.
Playground speak! I’ve been playing around with this era of computers since before they were collectible, and it’s the differences that made the market evolve. In other words, it was the computer equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion.
