Five Rare British Micro Computers - Show & Tell 

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

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.

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.

**The Retro Future has left the chat**

**LGR has left the chat.**

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!

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!"

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

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 !!!!!!

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.

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.

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.

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

Check out the Telestrat too!

Thanks Gaz

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.

Thanks Kim. Memotech episode coming right up for you sir

Yup - I read perhaps the same article which blew me away. So now I own an Enterprise 128 !

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.

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.

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.

And the Moebius artwork...

Hachette is still big in France doing part works of things like reproductions of French Dinky Cars.

I learned to touch-type on that keyboard and whenever I feel it now I get all those muscle memory moments back. And when I switch to my Atmos (still got both systems, as well as a Telestrat), I find it oddly disconcerting somehow. ;P

What about the Matra Alice, sexy name and sexy red

That has changed these days - so many new titles written for the Oric-1 in the 21st Century. We even got an Elite port, Impossible Mission, School Daze and Oricium too! And did you know that the Oric-1 version of Manic Miner is widely considered the BEST version of Manic Miner ever made?

Jay Vaughan wow

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.

Still got those old tapes around? Dig 'em out and send them our way: forums.defence-force.org/

If you read "Personal Computer World" or "Your Computer" mulit-platform magzines back in the day you would have seen adverts and reviews for all of them. p.s. I remeber there being weekly news-stand magazine giving the latest computing news back then "New Computer Express".

Oric-1 and Atmos have some really, really great stuff these days .. www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games