Hi from Germany

[TomPhobos]

Hello,

my real name is Thomas, i'm from Germany ans i'm a big fan of old homecomputers and videogame consoles. 3 weeks ago i had the chance to get a really gem for my collection, an Oric Atmos that was sold as "New Old Stock". Of course i caught the chance and a few day later i got my new computer:



A nice german Atmos that looks like new But when i tried to turn it on i noticed that the power adapter was broken. So i used another one. But i had no luck with it. It hangs after a few seconds. So i decided to register here, maybe you can help me with my (not so new) computer

I'll post more about the problem of my Atmos in the hardware section of the forum.

OK, best regards to all of you, hope to read you all in the forums

[ibisum]

Nice to hear from you Thomas and welcome to Defence Force!

Oric's are notoriously picky about their power supplies, I have noticed .. best thing is to make sure your replacement matches the specs of the old supply in terms of Amperage .. it should be at least 600mA, 9V, and center is positive.

Good luck and lets hear how things go! There are so many wonderful things to explore with the Atmos, I hope you have a good time with it ..

[Chema]

As ibisum said it should be at least 600mA.

A voltage from 7.5 to 9 volts should work. Anything beyond 5V is dissipated as heat by the regulator inside the Oric, so it should be even better to use 7.5V than 9V.

Pay attention to the polarity, or you can damage the Oric. Also be sure that the plug fits well. There are similar plugs which are not thick enough and fail easily.

I am using a ZX Spectrum+ PSU with the polarity reversed and it works perfectly.

Cheers!

[Godzil]

Does someone ever heard about Orices with a german keyboard?! I never see such ROM around here (apart from the hacked one), so please the first thing ever you should do is to dump the ROM of this Oric and please give it to us, I fear incompatibility with classic Oric ROMs (at least for everything which is related to the ROM, not the hardware itself)

[TomPhobos]

Thank you for your welcome

Yes, it's also the first time that i saw an Atmos with a german keyboard. And ok, it's always good to dump the ROMs I'll dump them (i have a Willem burner) and put the files here to the forum. Maybe it's really another version than the standard..

Well, for the PSU ... i checked the computer with 2 PSUs, both universal PSUs, set to 7,5V and 9V, 1A and 1,5A center positive, but always with the same problem.
Next i'll try another power plug or i try to open the old PSU and try to repair it.

[Vyper68]

Could you post a picture of the TV screen when the Atmos crashes?. Might be helpful before you open it up.
My Atmos took would hang when cold/unused and after a couple of power ups it would start working, which was down to a bad capacitor which needed replacing.If the PSU is absolutely okay to use with your Oric you could try power cycling it???

Failing that sell it to me

[Dbug]

Cool machine

Is that "engraved" characters, or like on the French keyboards I've seen, just some stickers glued over the keys?

[TomPhobos]

Could you post a picture of the TV screen when the Atmos crashes?. Might be helpful before you open it up.
My Atmos took would hang when cold/unused and after a couple of power ups it would start working, which was down to a bad capacitor which needed replacing.If the PSU is absolutely okay to use with your Oric you could try power cycling it???

Well, also after some power cycling the computer still resets. I'll post the TV-screen when i connect the computer the next time, but mostly it's only a white screen or with a cursor on the left corner .

Failing that sell it to me

Ehm ... let's think about it ... no

Is that "engraved" characters, or like on the French keyboards I've seen, just some stickers glued over the keys?

It's all engraved, no stickers

[ibisum]

This isn't a technically valid response, but have you tried with a different amperage power supply? I have 8 Atmos' and an Oric-1 and I have had similar symptoms that you are describing in the past - white screen, cursor or garbage on the screen. This changed for me when I used a 1A power supply as opposed to a 500mA supply .. on the odd chance that there's simply too much resistance in those old bones, perhaps "upping the juice" might prove fruitful?

(Like I said, not technically valid .. just voodoo...

[TomPhobos]

Well, i used a 1- and a 1,5A-PSU, both should be enough power for the Atmos. The original PSU has about 600mA, so a 500mA is a bit too weak. Both PSUs also worked perfectly with ZX Spectrums, so i think they should also work with the Atmos (of course with reversed polarity )

[Steve M]

Just found this thread.
Twi found these keyboards amongst the stuff we got from Steve Hopps (Opelco).

I think we were told back then that it was a Swedish keyboard (???)

I have one but there is no ROM with a different language so it just works like an ordinary keyboard. I'm not sure how many of the language ROMs found in the emulators existed in real Orics (?) They did intend to expand into Europe but many people seem to have received English ROM Orics.

[Godzil]

Just found this thread.
Twi found these keyboards amongst the stuff we got from Steve Hopps (Opelco).

I think we were told back then that it was a Swedish keyboard (???)

I have one but there is no ROM with a different language so it just works like an ordinary keyboard. I'm not sure how many of the language ROMs found in the emulators existed in real Orics (?) They did intend to expand into Europe but many people seem to have received English ROM Orics.

No the languages rom found with Euphoric are not officials, the come from Pascal Leclerc modifications: http://pleclerc.free.fr/Oric/OricPage.html