Oriclopedia: A series of videos on all things Oric

In this forum you can write about anything that does not fit in other forums.
This includes generic Oric talkings and things that are totaly unrelated but want to share with people here :)
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Dbug
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Oriclopedia: A series of videos on all things Oric

Post by Dbug »

I started a new series of videos to educate people about the Oric, this first one is about Tansoft.

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Steve M
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Steve M »

Do you have the Oric-1 version of the Forth manual?

I've got 1043 commercial titles listed.
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Dbug »

I've shown all the manuals I have (for Tansoft programs).

1043 titles is not bad at all :)
Does that include unique games, or also French versions of Tansoft programs and Spanish releases of Loriciels games?
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Dbug »

Second video in the Oriclopedia category.

This time we cover the differences between 16k and 48k Oric, between Oric 1 and Atmos, and what a Pravetz 8D and Telestrat look like.



(That was my first time using a tripod so I could use my hands, but that was kind of difficult to be perfectly in the camera field, hopefully I will do better next time - and I should buy a timer to see the elapsed time! Also I guess I should move the thread to some other category now that's it's not only game related)
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Steve M »

Dbug wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:32 pm 1043 titles is not bad at all :)
Does that include unique games, or also French versions of Tansoft programs and Spanish releases of Loriciels games?
That's all the commercial titles I could find. UK, French and a few more. Not everything is there. None of the listings. type-ins etc were included.

I'll send you an Oric-1 Forth manual next time I post something.

I was just thinking there were also the Tansoft boxes which contained four titles. Labelled Oric Software down the side, they came in versions for 16K or 48K. (Though I'm not sure if there was any difference in the software.) I think they are the Home Finance, Multigames, Flight that you mention earlier. (I forget the fourth one - maybe it's Forth?)
There are a few titles in my Tansoft list that I haven't seen. Prestel Software, Rig Runner ??? Solides - Oric CAD in French, Vol Oric, and there was some music software used in schools that I've never come across but heard people talk about.
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Symoon »

Dbug wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 3:44 pm Second video in the Oriclopedia category.
Currently watching it little by little in the transports as I'm going at work.
A few things that you may try next time, for better watching experience (I know it's not so easy!):
- give more angle to the camera so we can see the screen more.
- adjust the top or zoom more, here we see the top of the CRT screen that takes 25% of the picture's heigth, while documents detail can't be seen (but I watch on the small screen of a phone, not the best!)
- and as an option (because it takes time to do), yeah, edit a bit, especially silent screwing/unscrewing moments ;)

The rest is cool, the Oric family is all there. Interesting to think that the non-existing 16K Atmos could actually be upgrades from 16K Oric-1.
About Oric-1 logos, I would have sweared that the grey one was first. We got our Oric-1 in june 1983, and it was grey. But I might be wrong, the 16K coloured one brings a doubt. Do you have its serial number? I could compare in 2 weeks with my 16K one, which I think is grey.

About 16K again, yes, the memory "loops" on higher addresses. That's what makes the games compatible with both machines though they have different addresses: if you POKE the 48K address, it will update the correct 16K address. There was a discussion about it somewhere, as I was asking myself the same question. ROM tests if it's a 16 or 48K like this (IIRC it pokes somewhere in 16K+Y address, then reads if Y has changed, then it's a 16K model)
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Steve M »

I think part of the reason for the Atmos was to make it compatible with the Microdisc.
Oric-1 came with twin EPROM and manufactured ROM and the EPROMs don't seem to have the ROMDIS needed for the Microdisc. I think it caused a headache which may have been why the Micrdisc was delayed and not released in Oric-1 livery.
The Atmos version made it clear the Atmos went with the Atmos-coloured Microdisc, and the new keyboard made it a more serious looking option, with the plotter by its side, it looked like something that could be used for business, word processing and so on. Much less of a toy than the Spectrum.

I've never been 100% sure about the Oric-1 badge. I've seen some early ones with colour, but early reviews showing the twin EPROM Oric-1 usually have the grey badge. So I think grey came first.
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by ibisum »

As I remember it (I was tuned in), the Atmos was done because:

1) The Oric-1 keyboard was widely panned as crap. (* - I didn't care, I wrote so much text on it, I kind of enjoy using it these days, especially after MacBook Pro hell..)

2) Indeed, a hardware fix was needed to enable ROMDIS. Oh how I lusted after the supposed Atmos+Microdisc+RGB monitor rig.

3) When the French guys took over, they wanted something that kicked Minitels' ass. Atmos kind of does, if you look at it as a Minitel machine that .. can also be programmed with assembly.


And now, gone down this path, I must ask. What sort of machine would Oric have made to compete with the Amiga, should it have had sufficient non-warehouse-fire business misgivings and whatnot .. ?
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Dbug »

Symoon wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2019 9:34 pm
Dbug wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 3:44 pm Second video in the Oriclopedia category.
Currently watching it little by little in the transports as I'm going at work.
A few things that you may try next time, for better watching experience (I know it's not so easy!):
- give more angle to the camera so we can see the screen more.
- adjust the top or zoom more, here we see the top of the CRT screen that takes 25% of the picture's heigth, while documents detail can't be seen (but I watch on the small screen of a phone, not the best!)
- and as an option (because it takes time to do), yeah, edit a bit, especially silent screwing/unscrewing moments ;)
I know :)
The main issue there is that it was the first time I used the tripod, and the camera was reversed which caused a bunch of issues, including but not limited to:
- it was hard to see the screen, which is why I was out of the field now and then (and also did not see how long it was)
- I did not realize the screen was taking so much space while not being very readable
- the video being 180 degrees rotated set havok in my video editing software making it absolutely painful to use (the "reverse filter" is super slow)

Next time I will try to find a way that allows me to be closer from the table, with a better angle so we can see what is on the screen as well, and that does not require rotating the camera.
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Dbug »

After Tansoft, time to look at the French heavyweight champion of Oric Software: Loriciels!



Hopefully this time everything is in the camera frame!
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Symoon »

Nice one. I can confirm titles are missing (Citadelle, Godilloric, Carn-3, Vortex, Echecs, Dico-5, Fromage, Annuaire, Assembleur Symbolique, Basic Français, Calcul Mental, well I'm not going to list them all, there are more and probably more than I know, too ;) )

Some early games can be found edited by "Ellix", or "LX", which apparently quickly became Loriciels.
Oh and Le Manoir du Dr Genius does have graphics, I guess that's what made it famous along with Keikekankoi at the time ;)

I had never seen Intertron. That would be a cool candiate for recording/scanning ;)
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

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Oh and Le Manoir du Dr Genius does have graphics, I guess that's what made it famous along with Keikekankoi at the time ;)
I had never seen Intertron. That would be a cool candiate for recording/scanning ;)
Oops, well, that's a bummer, and of course now it's not possible to add annotations on videos anymore, guess I'll have to amend the decription.

Regarding Intertron, maybe you can get Jede to fix the oric.org timeouts, I tried to change some minor things like release dates of some games, but just changing that did not work, it just timed out.

I'm all for helping with the DB, adding scans, etc... but I'm not going to spend minutes waiting for something to eventually fail :)
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Re: Oriclopedia: Tansoft

Post by Symoon »

Dbug wrote: Sun Sep 29, 2019 10:24 am
Oh and Le Manoir du Dr Genius does have graphics, I guess that's what made it famous along with Keikekankoi at the time ;)
I had never seen Intertron. That would be a cool candiate for recording/scanning ;)
Oops, well, that's a bummer, and of course now it's not possible to add annotations on videos anymore, guess I'll have to amend the decription.
Yes that was a curious and stupid move from Youtube. I recall though that I managed to add some comments, maybe with subtitles or something like that? Too old to remember, I have never used Youtube that much.
Regarding Intertron, maybe you can get Jede to fix the oric.org timeouts, I tried to change some minor things like release dates of some games, but just changing that did not work, it just timed out.

I'm all for helping with the DB, adding scans, etc... but I'm not going to spend minutes waiting for something to eventually fail :)
I'm waiting myself for a significant amout of fixes to corrrect or update some games, I was waiting for one this weekend - no news yet ;) But Jede's quite busy and as painful it can be, I already bored him with that enough so he's aware.
I know Jede's bored with the timeout too, and willing to fix it (I asked him, I'd say, 4 or 5 times :mrgreen: ). I usually have it 1 or 2 times then it's OK.
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Re: Oriclopedia: A series of videos on all things Oric

Post by Dbug »

This week video is about the Oric MCP-40.



As usual, feel free to signal any factual error, I will add the corrections in the video description.

There are some violent cuts in the editing, one was caused by the power strip falling down under the table, forcing me to crawl under to get it back to plug the printer and then almost tripping the camera down, the other one is the stupid editor of the Theoric program that does not seem to have an exit feature and that kept printing dots until I stopped it violently by switching off the whole thing :D
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Re: Oriclopedia: A series of videos on all things Oric

Post by sam »

We don't see the printing-head very well, but from this other video

I can see this isn't a dot-printer at all, but rather a "vector" printer.

How do you convert the screen bitmap into the proper vectorial form?

Notice: it is bad they choose R/G/B pens because you can't do subtractive color addition with them. Did you succeed in producing correct yellow color with it? ( :idea: by introducing a little offset between the R and G pass so they each print over white paper for instance).
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