My Oric Atmos

February 9, 2022

(Originally posted 2020-10-03)

The Oric Atmos is one of the machines I used a lot in my youth. Alas my old one broke down and we swapped it away. Also alas so far have not found back tapes of the programs I wrote back then.

One of the best looking 8-bits ever made.

For me, the Oric is one of the best looking 8 bits ever made. Very beautiful case in black and orange colours. Also an excellent BASIC dialect with a good manual as well. Enabled programming in HIRES quite easily. Was never very popular in the Nethetlands back then, so did not have much commercial software with it.

Recently re-acquired my present Oric Atmos. Still a great looking machine. Added several parts of new hardware to make it more usable with modern mass storage. In the end it became a pan-European collection:

main unit from Sweden (obtained privately via Facebook group)
power supply unit from Spain via MiComputer
SCART video cable from the UK via RetroComputerShack
Erebus SD memory tape emulator from the UK via 8Bit-Tronics
Cumana Reborn USB to floppy emulator from Poland via SellMyRetro

(Update 14/2/2022:) Since my original posting I added some additional hardware:

A second Oric Atmos unit (from Belgium this time)
A Twilighte Board to be able to run the Oric with Orix, an Unix like shell, enabling also direct SD card access (from France)
An IJK Egoist interface and IJK Egopad to add joystick support to the Oric (from Bulgaria)
An 8Bit hub to add network, joystick and mouse support to the Oric (from Japan)

The inside of my Oric my-oric-atmos-2