Oric 1

The Oric 1 was a British computer that gained reasonable popularity in Europe during the early 1980's.

It was a direct competitor to the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 16, Commodore 64, Acorn Electron and the BBC Micro - but it never did it gain the intense rivalry that ensued between Sir Clive's baby and the bullnose.

However, the Oric 1 was a notable addition to eight-bit range of home computers that were available at the time.

Let's have a look at a slightly lesser known machine...

Just like the ZX Spectrum, the machine came in both a 16K and 48K version. A small plotter-printer was also available, as well as micro drives.

The sound chip incorporated in the machine was the same one that was installed within Amstrad CPC range, MSX computers and the Vectrex console (The AY Chip).

The chicklet keyboard had a total of fifty seven keys, including stand alone cursor keys (nice)and a large spacebar, which did give it an advantage over the 'dead flesh' rubber keyed ZX Spectrum.

Having said all of that, every other computer at that time (apart from the ZX80 and ZX81) had a better keyboard than the Spectrum.

The computer was powered by the 6502a processor running at 1Mhz (far slower than a ZX Spectrum), although it did have a co-processor to do some of the leg work.

Text could be displyed at a resolution of 40X28 and graphics at 240X200 (which was a high resolution mode). Eight colours were available to the user, which was pretty standard at the time.

The Oric 1 was a pretty cool looking machine back in 1983, but this cool exterior masked a less than cool ROM, which had more bugs in it than The Temple Of Doom.

These ROM issues only hastened the Oric 1's demise, and a lot of users had problems when loading programs in from cassette as the process could be very unreliable.

Due to these issues the machine never became known for classic arcade games. The amount of software available for it was small beer when compared to the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and even the BBC Micro.

The Oric 1 came and went without much of a fanfare, and gave way to the increasing popularity of the Sinclair and Commodore machines. It was superceded by the Oric Atmos in 1984 and by 1985 had pretty much vanished...

If only the ROM had been stabilised and the tape routines fixed then the Oric 1 could have been a major player in the 8-bit generation in the UK. As it was machines from Acorn, Sinclair and Commodore became the popular 8-bit players - and the CPC range from Amstrad took off a little later too.

I think the Oric machines became popular in France - with the Atmos doing particularly well.

It's a shame really because the ROM problems aside the Oric 1 was a decent machine that was comparable in capability to other computers of the era.