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Welcome to Oric world !
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13/12/0: Hey, Bruno P. has volunteered for maintaining
this site ! The Oric News shall be updated more often soon, that's great
when someone offers help: congratulations to Bruno ! I guess the next update
will be written by him : don't worry I'm not leaving the Oric, and I have
many projects to finish (with BIP among them). Anyway, time is short, but
I will emphasize an important piece of news:
- the Oric driver in MESS has been rewritten by Kev Thacker,
now there's great support for the Oric coming in ! Kev is determined to
bring the Oric emulation in MESS to the top, with emulation of disk controllers
(even the Bulgarian one), WAV tapes and even the newest SYNC trick, so
be sure to download the latest version of MESS: it is often updated and
run on about every modern platform. Soon it will be THE emulator to have,
even for PC users, as I don't have plans to rewrite Euphoric for the Win32
platform and it becomes harder and harder to run Euphoric on latests Windows
releases like ME or 2000. Here is the Official
Home Page of MESS.
21/09/0: Oops, it seems I'm not able to update this site
often enough... I have some materials that I haven't uploaded yet, and
I prefer to develop things rather than advertizing them on a web site...
So, I'm seriously considering giving the keys of this site to someone willing
to maintain it more efficiently. If you are interested, please mail-me.
In the mean time, I've some stuff for you, but not the time for a lot of
explanations:
- a new game for the Oric: Rush Hour,
with a never-seen-before user interface. Get addicted to this puzzle game
and slide cars with your lightpen (or mouse if using Euphoric: don't forget
to switch on the lightpen emulation). Written in 100% BASIC, just to prove
the Oric has guts !
- the Euphoric emulator for the
Cassiopeia E105 (if you are lucky enough to have one): it's great to
play the above
Rush Hour game with the stylus !
- a patch for Euphoric, that fixes
a display bug (shown by Dbug's latest experiments on screen attributes).
The patch modifies 3 bytes in your euphoric executable and it works with
any version, just place the patch executable in the same directory and
run it there.
26/03/0: Waow, four monthes without any update !-( Don't
think the Oric world is dying, it's just that I'm too busy programming
my TCP/IP stack for the Oric. So here are the news: an email was sent
by an Oric yesterday !
I should update my BIP page and link it from here so that you can follow
this work in progress...
Sorry to all of you who have sent me oric stuff during the past weeks (especially Ray Gannon and those huge microtan scans I haven't been able to upload anywhere since they are so large). Our Microtan specialist Geoff Macdonald has been very active too, transfering his old programs (damn good they are) and writing his own Microtan emulator. More on this soon, I hope he will be willing to drive the Microtan pages himself :-)
7/11: Thanks to Roger Barbier who has sent a copy of the FT-DOS manual for all Jasmin users, and thanks again to Geoff MacDonald for his scan of Microtan World issue 4. Also, the 1K 6502 programming contest has removed any stress, so please enjoy developing 1K programs on the Microtan !
8/10: I've uploaded an update of tap2cd that has a more transparent use, there's no option anymore so building CD archives should be even easier...
5/10: tired of waiting tape loading ? Here are some vitamins for your CLOAD commands : tap2cd is a tool that generates sound files from tape images (like tap2wav), but the Oric then loads them 10 times faster ! You may use your PC as a file server or store hundreds of Oric programs on a single audio-CD, you only have to download the package in the PC tools page and read the doc...
27/09: it seems many people are asking to load tape images found on the net, back to their real Oric. I've updated the tap2wav tool that generates sound files from these tape images, so that you can connect the soundcard of your PC to your Oric or a taperecorder... download it from the PC tools page of course, and don't forget to read the doc: your PC is not always as reliable as you would like it to be...
3/09: Long time, no news... Right, I have been on holidays without Internet access, and then I had to wait for my out-of-order notebook to be repaired... So, here are some news:
Internet on the Oric has never been so close, I greatly advanced the SIP project during these holidays, and you should soon be able to read the details in Rhetoric magazine...
Hey, all you 1K 6502 programming competitors, wake up ! I haven't received any program yet, so the submission deadline is delayed to September the 20th, 9:00 GMT !!!
Geoff MacDonald is a great Microtan supporter ! He has scanned some issues of Microtan World magazine, you can read them on the Microtan page (you would have guessed...)
9/07: Thanks to Pascal Leclerc, a new Oric ROM is available, it fixes the bugs of ROM 1.1 and is somewhat faster. Pascal is working on an even better ROM with enhanced graphic routines. Also, his page is now on the Oric Web Ring, which continues to grow !
9/06: It has started ! Enter the 1K 6502 programming contest and win an Oric computer !
7/06: The Oric is gaining help from its eastern clone ! The Pravetz 8D had an interface to standard Apple2 disk controllers. Since many people are asking for oric disk controllers, this could well be an alternative: the interface is easy to build, details in the hardware page. Thanks to George Dramcheff for the schematics and the eprom contents. The latest version of Euphoric (not released yet) also emulates the Pravetz interface and the Apple2 disk controller.
29/04: I've transfered some software for the Microtan, you can try it from the Java emulator page.
Richard Bannister has updated Oric/MacOS to version 1.5. Using his own words : "The new version can use your Mac's 3D accelerator card to render full screen oric video ;-)"
26/04: There's now a page for the 1K 6502 programming contest, with a BBS serving both for questions and sign-up. I'm currently looking for sponsors too, so if you wish to advertize your products/services, it will cost you very little (really 8-): please contact me...
31/03: This was just one day before April the 1st, so
of course the Microtan2000 is an April Fool's joke 8-))
Anyway, I like the specifications of this Microtan65 compatible
palmtop device so they can be read *here*
!
23/03: I've written a new cycle-based 6502 emulator, it's demonstrated in latest version of the Microtan emulator. Also, now you can download the Microtan emulator (sources included) so as to run it locally as a program with load/save capability.
18/03: I've finished typing the Microtan BASIC manual, it contains a complete introduction of BASIC for the beginners, and even an example of doing graphics in BASIC.
10/03: Microtan Java emulator is now available from the Microtan65 page. Also I've begun to manually transfer (i.e. type) the Microtan manuals sent by J.P.Gilliver, so that you can now experiment with this computer. And... stay tuned, I might well dive in the manufacturing of Microtans with a modern look...
I've a problem : iFrance keeps deleting the Euphoric distribution because it's larger than 1 MB. So, until I find a solution, please download it from one of the mirror sites.
12/02:A new mirror site is now available in UK, thanks to Jon. I've also added a counter in order to have an idea of visits in the long run...
Thanks to Ray Gannon who sent me schematics and ROM images of the Microtan 65, the Oric ancestor now has its dedicated page here. I intend to make the Oric ancestor better known. Watch this space for the coming Microtan programming contest and exercise yourself with the on-line Microtan emulator !