Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Oric-1/Atmos

4 bytes added, 6 October
The Oric -1 and Oric Atmos were [[6502]]-powered competitors to the 48kb [[ZX Spectrum]]. The Oric 1 has very much the same form factor, including calculator-style keys, but the Oric Atmos provides a full-travel keyboard.
Originally one of the competitors for the contract to be the BBC computer that was ultimately awarded to [[Acorn]], the Oric retains an unusual mixed text/graphics display mode that utilises inline colour attributes.
Due to the need to include both control codes and completely-addressable graphics, in graphics mode each byte contains only six pixels ― a seventh bit is used optionally to invert the available colours. So the 40-byte display is at most 240 pixels. In practice it is usually less because of the need to establish foreground and background colours in the leftmost columns.
An [[AY ]] is provided as the sound chip, exactly as on the CPC.
The Oric is also notable for shipping initially with a buggy ROM that made loading and saving from tape extremely unreliable. This was corrected in later manufacturing runs.
1,028
edits