forum.defence-force.org

Hello kitties,

Chema just posted a link to an eBay vendor for an Oric ULA (cf viewtopic.php?p=19421#p19421).
This raised my interest because that vendor obviously has a lot of them for sale so they must have access to a back-then official stock of Oric chips.

Since all the Oric machines will eventually fail, securing sources of their official chips is obviously of interest to the Oric community in order to lengthen as much as possible the life of these machines.

This brought to mind the following questions:

• This vendor is based in Bulgaria, so they could actually be selling clones of the chips, not the original ones (I am not an expert there, please correct me if that is wrong).
  I know that there are Bulgarian people in the community, so maybe they could contact them to ask them what their source is?
• Should the community organize and buy as many of these chips as is currently available in order to secure that supply for future repair needs?
  Right now, they are still really cheap, so this would be the best time to buy large quantities of them.

What do you guys think?
(I personally think I am going to buy a few dozen of these chips, just to make sure they do not disappear in the wild forever.)
Edit: I bought 20 chips from different vendors, I have no need for them so contact me if you need one for your repairs and I will send it to you for shipping+original price.

I'm in, if there is a community buy being organised.

NekoNoNiaow wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2019 12:14 am This vendor is based in Bulgaria, so they could actually be selling clones of the chips,
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As far as I know, CDI must've made a run (or several) in the 1980s of these chips, enough to make Oric and Atmos and derived machines for some time to come -- it's not something where you can just order a few more from the factory. You commit to a large number, and they make them. Then Oric's future went downhill and they had more chips than they knew what to do with.

These chips will have passed from Oric UK to Oric Europe, via various hands, and to part-miners and collectors companies, in some cases they won't even know or care what they are. You want them, I've got them, let's talk money. Surplus parts.

I bought some from a Bulgarian seller (ebay, different account), there must be something about Bulgaria attracting Oric users ... and they all checked out OK.

As to clones, the cost to tool up to do that would be huge, there could never be a financial payback for that, IMO.

Unless you mean a clone that's an FPGA, hiding in a plastic DIP package .... that's another thing!

mikeb wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2019 5:26 pm... there must be something about Bulgaria attracting Oric users ...

This 'something' is called Pravetz-8D . All Pravetz-8D are equipped with original ULA's!
I really don't think that someone here ordered chips from CDI for Pravetz-8D production but they got them as you said from re-sellers.
I don't know this guys who sell ULA's but @jorodr knows them personally and I'll ask him to give me more info about them.

If I recall correctly there's a thread on this board that gives a bit of backstory that there was a shortage for a while then a large quantity were found in a warehouse and sold to part resellers which allowed the prices to become more reasonable (I recently bought a spare ULA for around CAD$10 from a US seller which worked great).

A few months ago I saw one of the Cumulus vendors showing a FGPA based Spectrum ULA and given the recent full decap/reverse engineering of the Oric one hopefully a smart soul with sufficient time will eventually be able to do the same (perhaps with some cool enhancements like hardware sprites?) - Long live the Oric!

iss wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2019 6:18 pm I really don't think that someone here ordered chips from CDI for Pravetz-8D production

In all honesty, I don't think they would be able to. CDI would have had a contract with Oric (UK) to produce the chips, would have made them, and after Oric collapsed, it's unlikely CDI would have retained anything in terms of drawings/IP -- hence the problem in finding how-it-works. Even if they did, they are unlikely to start making a privately contracted custom chip for some other customer that just turns up and says they want them.

I doubt CDI even have records of how many they made (total), in how many tranches etc. by now.

iss wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2019 6:18 pm

mikeb wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2019 5:26 pm... there must be something about Bulgaria attracting Oric users ...

This 'something' is called Pravetz-8D . All Pravetz-8D are equipped with original ULA's!
I really don't think that someone here ordered chips from CDI for Pravetz-8D production but they got them as you said from re-sellers.
I don't know this guys who sell ULA's but @jorodr knows them personally and I'll ask him to give me more info about them.

Nice, thanks Iss!
Looking forward having more info about where these chips are coming from.

I have bought another two for futureproofing my Oric's the new chips work fine in my repaired Oric-1 so pleased Chema pointed me in that direction.

My Two spare ULA's arrived on Saturday so now I have Three spares so if anyone in the UK needs one at some point I would let one go for cost plus post.

I received the chips as well from both vendors.
I now have around 20 of these, if you need some, just ping me and I will send it at purchase price + shipping.

I also got myself a few ULA from a few different sources (some 1983 and some 1984 revisions), that may come in handy when I try to fix the Oric Nova 64 machines

I'm now waiting for a few more chips (rams, 6502, soundchips, capacitors and tension regulator)

Dbug wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:35 pm I'm now waiting for a few more chips (rams, 6502, soundchips, capacitors and tension regulator)

Sounds like you have a rare early clockwork version of Oric there ...

mikeb wrote: ↑Fri Jan 31, 2020 5:25 pm

Dbug wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2020 8:35 pm I'm now waiting for a few more chips (rams, 6502, soundchips, capacitors and tension regulator)

Sounds like you have a rare early clockwork version of Oric there ...

Tss tss, ok, Voltage Regulator :p
And while I was at it, I got a 65816->6502 board to play with 16 bit code.