Five Rare British Micro Computers - Show & Tell
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
- We have raided the Swindon Museum of Computing and grabbed five rare British micro computers to show you today.
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But...but.....Camputers Lynx!!!!? ☹️
A great video as usual.... Thank you.
Love to see deep dives into the MTX and Enterprise.
There's one machine I'd love to see covered more - the Robotron Z1013, of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It's a 1984 machine, designed to compete with the growing home computer scene which was doing so well in West Germany (and the rest of Europe and the world). Robotron were a state-owned affair that made computers for government and industrial use, who were charged wth creating a cheap home micro that would help keep the GDR competitive with the west. Unfortunately, West Germany had a plant where they manufactured Commodore 64s, while Robotron used chips that were rejected from other machines due to performance or manufacturing issues. the rest of the computer was similarly cheap - a single board machine, with keyboard that would make the ZX80 look like a touch-typists dream, you had to assemble your own power supply, case, and procure a television to act as the display. Like the ZX80, it was entirely character based, with no graphics routines. It's also all in German. There don't seem to be any in mint-on-box examples, as everyone who bought one had to fashion a better case than the vacuum-formed tray the machine arrived in. And as soon as the Berlin wall fell, those pesky West Germans sold their Eastern brothers and sisters their old C64s, while they went and bought a nice new Amiga or Atari ST.
1984-finally-an-east-german-home-computer.html
I have to vote for the Grundy Newbrain simply because of the name. If you can get hold of one of them I would love to see it working... but that might be a Treasure to Treasure episode??
RetroManCave id love to see a video on the Oric-1 and Atmos as well as the memotech and the enterprise 128
I want to see full episodes on all of the computers featured in this video. This video was great and all to see rare machines, but fact sheets are not enough, I want to see them in action.
Yep second this. Maybe a flight sim on the Enterprise 128
Thirded.
If you made the episode long enough you could probably review every game sold in WH Smiths (in the 1980s a major UK retailer of computers) for them back in the day. Do that for the Spectrum and the episode would still be going next year.
Absolutely. We need a follow up on how the machines ran. What games were like. How good or not they were to use.
Yes, big old tease by not seeing these powered on and working...especially the Enterprise 128, since that's a complete new one to me.
RetroManCave talks to a future version of himself.
I thought it was he uncle?
They could honestly be brothers. Nice beards aside they have very similiar facial features.
I was thinking the same thing lol
They do look eerily similar.
which one is which?
He's a Time Lord.
PEEL IT! Peel the label!
“No retrobriting needed”
8-Bit Guy has left the chat.
**The Retro Future has left the chat**
**LGR has left the chat.**
Having grown up with Atari, Apple and Commodore over here in the US, I really enjoy being able to learn more about the other side of the computer revolution in the west, especially in the UK. So much amazing tech with wonderful stories behind them!
I literally spotted the Atmos from the video thumbnail. I am in the process of making the Re-Oric (a 10x10cm Oric1/Atmos replacement board with SMT components and a few other goodies) and I'm also working on Project Atmos(fear), which is a re-imagined successor to the Atmos, akin to what the Sam-Coupe was for the Spectrum.
Neato ... do you have a website for the project? I kinda regret giving away the Atmos I had at one point, but on the other hand semi-modern mass storage solutions cost an arm and a leg
@@1337Shockwav3 I don't. It was only supposed to be a pet project. I posted it on the Facebook Oric owners page and a bunch of people were like "I want one! Take my money!!" So I'm making it into something that meets their needs. Like I said, it was initially just a proof of concept to see if it was possible (and it was, just)
@@1337Shockwav3 Look up Cumana Reborn and Erebus - no longer leaving you limbless!
It was great to finally get to sit behind the lovely wood desk, surrounded by all the interesting things in the cave, talking about old computers with a like minded person!
I'm excited to see the Enterprise, Memotech, and SAM Coupé in action!
The Oric 1 and Oric Atmos looked great. I had tried the Oric 1 at WH Smiths when the computers were running along a shelf for anyone to use. I remember the BASIC Language, Graphics and sound was an upgrade to the Sinclair ZX80/ZX81.
The MTX512 was a fascinating machine: it had the ability to display windowed graphics (with BASIC commands, no less) and featured a forerunner of HyperCard.
That is really cool. I would love to see a demo of that.
That's interesting re HyperCard. What was the application called please?
@@clangerbasher It was called "Noddy".
@@thedungeondelver Thanks. I remember back in the day thinking HyperCard was so clever I was expecting the tech to be everywhere. I know in many ways "browsers" and off shoots have brought it to us, but not exactly.
@@thedungeondelver Here it is!!!!!!!!!!!
www.primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/tools/noddy_plus/mtx_noddy_plus.htm
The Oric Atmos has a stunning look, to be honest!
This. I remember seeing it in the shops as a teenager and being amazed by it. I already had a C64 by then and loved that machine. Otherwise I'd have probably tried to convince mum to buy one.
horribly obsolete when it was released, 6502 when everybody else was Z80 at the minimum and 32bit was on the scene, the predecessor Oric 1 wasn't much better, same innards improved case for the Atmos, both used ONLY Teletext graphics, supposed to be CEEFAX machines !!!!!!
I loved typing these basic commands into the Oric when it used to be out on display in Dixons back in the 80s! ZAP, PING, SHOOT and EXPLODE
I did the same in the Boots and WH Smiths. It made me realize the Oric was totally shit. Why? Because all processing would stop while the machine played the arcade sound and then only resume afterwards. Totally absurd. Nothing like the BBC Micro SOUND and ENVELOPE commands that would process sound in parallel with running code and therefore graphics and game playfield.
A feature later robbed by STOS/AMOS game programming BASIC on the 16-bits... :D
@@Drew-Dastardly Ermm, you foolish kid! Oric has SOUND, and PLAY .. and MUSIC .. commands as well .. you just didn't discover them, it seems. Some of the greatest music you will find on the 8-bit machines was made on the Oric, with its independent sound chip supporting multichannel audio.
Oric-1 was my first computer (Oric Atmos the 2nd one). The reasons why it worked so well in France are : Same CPU as the Apple ][. RGB output for scart TV. High resolution.
the reason why it's labeled 48K and 68K of ram is that the Rom and the Ram overlay on the same bus adress range.
You can toggle from Rom to ram, and this was used by Tangerine to load the system from floppies. Of course, in normal use, the overlayed part of the ram is useless. The lack of on/off swich was the main cause of failure. The connector was not capable to survive that much hard reset cycles. I learn 6502 machine code on it.
One thing: the RAM overlay *isn't* entirely useless - if you had a micro drive, you could access the full 64k and still have a DOS at hand as well.
The VIA chip had unused lines, it's surprising they didn't use that to page between ROM & RAM.
Man, I remember lusting after that Memotech - purely because the industrial design was so deeply cool.
I did as well. I still have old computer magazines from the period that had an article on it. I must have pored over the pictures like it was a porno magazine.
Ha just looked and gone 'blimey, Id forgot that but I totally wanted it as a kid!"
i can remember back in the old days standing looking through the window of the newly opened "computer shop" with my mate munching on a packet of outerspacers dreaming of ALL these machines with their HUGE memories !
My first computer was an Oric 1. Set me off on 50+ years of computing and still enjoying my gaming, now retired and 66 years old.
I remember thinking that Memotech was the coolest looking thing ever, I still do :)
I had that Memotech machine way back then... Bought it from flea market with few bucks! Never really "got it", because we had no documentation for it in Finland and there was no internet then to find out more :D I was a curious teen and broke it in to a million pieces and "studied" it's parts :D And thanks to machines like that, still build and fix computers on semi-weekly basis today!
It was sturdy for sure. A solid 1 mm brushed aluminium. Its BASIC had some incredibly awkward commands such as GENPAT (generate pattern) to define a sprite, and you can probably imagine what CTLSPR did. Then, it had a built-in assembler, a built-in debugger, and something called Noddy, which was a language to build text screens. A lot of good ideas, just not always equally well executed, and the manual was big, but not always practical.
During its lifetime, it always struggled: never enough software, hideously expensive hardware, and community support was understandably difficult in the non-connected 1980s.
I remember the adverts in the magazines. It looks so cool. I wanted one badly, but dad bought a commodore plus 4. Which also had bugger all software.
Sadly it's all looks, overall the machine is quite underwhelming.
@@1337Shockwav3 Nah, it's pretty much average for the time it came out in, and probably even a bit above average. Bear in mind that MSX, with exactly the same specs, had yet to come out.
It will be nice to see more on the Memotech and Enterprise machines. Also would be nice to see videos on the Jupiter Ace and Einstein computers which always seem to be left out of collections.
Yes. I actually knew someone who bought an Einstein back in the day.
@@MrDuncl I still have my Jupiter Ace, somewhere. The built-in language was FORTH.
@@MrDuncl The Einstein could actually run MSX software easily, totally compatible... It could also emulate the Spectrum. Dearly wanted one, but it was too expensive.
Really like the fact that it (the Enterprise) has its own built-in joystick. Hope it contained a port for an extra one though, because if that think breaks you would have been fucked if you were into gaming at all.
Wasn't the Einstein technically a Taiwanese computer though
I was lucky enough to have all those machines in my collection 15+ years ago. I was even lucky enough to have found a Science of Cambridge Mk14 which I paid zero pounds for !! Unfortunately my wife started to get a little unhappy that my collection was migrating from the full garage to the dining table :-( ... ebay got the lot.
I Wish I would of hung onto them now and put the wife on eBay instead lol.
French here. The Oric 1 was my first computer. But in France, to switch the TV to the auxiliary Péritel input (aka SCART), you need to deliver a very well regulated 12V to switch the circuit. And this was a royal PITB, if I may say so, so much so I was using a motorbike battery as no transformer I found was stable enough. All in all, I used the computer way less than I wanted to because of that. The last nail in the coffin was when I was given a big beautiful and very advanced CP/M machine. The Oric became a closet queen in an instant. Still got it, by the way. Also saved an Atmos later, gifted by a family member years later. But what I really wished for from Tangerine was a Stratos. This had me salivating for a while because Minitel compatibility ;-)
The Atmos would definitely pique my interest as a video all on it's own - i'd love to see the thing in action. That and the MTX just look so quintessentially 1980's - everything was black, with a red stripe or highlights - fitted with the style perfectly.
Some of the 21st Century Oric software that's been produced would blow our minds if we'd known back in the teenager 80's, that such things were possible. Check out www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games for some examples with screenshots, and if you're interested find yourself an Emulator (there are a few to choose from - my favourite is Oricutron, but ClockSignal is also worth a look) and get an account on oric.org/ to go through the classics. Seriously, if we'd known what the Oric could do back in the day, things would've been quite different .. new graphics modes were discovered and new techniques for exploiting them resulted in some FABULOUS looking games this century.
0:29 How... how did everyone resist peeling off that protective film over the years? :o
because it barely got used, prob spent most of its life in a cupboard. Not a lot you can do or want to do with Teletext graphics.
I wrote 2 adventure games for the 48k Oric-1, "Starprobe" and "Land of Illusion" (released by Tansoft). I also worked on a game for a pre-production Enterprise, but the project was abandoned before completion. Happy times!! 😁
The Matra Alice was a TRS-80 MC10 in a red case. What made it "French" was that Hachette is a huge publishing house with many magazines and books aimed at teens and young adults. I remember buying "Jeux & Stratégies" mags from France so long ago and it was impossible not to see an ad or two for the Alice. Maybe there was some pressure on the editors to include Alice versions of the game listings at the end of the mags, but my copies of those magazines are long gone so I can't check. :)
And the Moebius artwork...
Hachette is still big in France doing part works of things like reproductions of French Dinky Cars.
Worked in a computer shop in 1985, peak 8 bit era. Software was basically ZX Spectrum, C64, 1% BBC, 1% everything else. Nobody ever came in for Oric, and we never saw any of the other stuff for sale in software catalogues.
I had an Oric-1. Great machine. I used to sit and program it in my bedroom on our portable TV.
Hi, I remember drooling over the Enterprise, when it was called the Elan, when I saw it in Your Computer Magazine. Thought it would be the computer for me. By the time it came out had moved on. The built in joystick was for the young game playing me a great selling point. Would be interested in seeing it in action so I can see what I missed.
You're not alone. I wanted it immediately... however, coming from a 'larger family', it was quite impossible. The price for it here in Malta was quite higher than the quoted British prices, which was daft. Eventually it was a flop here. I moved from the TI-99/4a, to an MSX, and then to the C64... On both Z80 and 6502 I learned assembly language easily.... In my opinion, it still looks stunning enough today.
@@metalheadmalta Don't let the looks decieve you ... the keyboard looks quite good, but is in fact on par with the zx81 due to keys getting constantly jammed and bouncing. Technically still a severely underrated machine. If it had come out 1-2 years earlier I can definitely see it compete among the popular commodore, atari, sinclair and amstrad machines. Sadly it ended up as a sidenote.
@@1337Shockwav3 There are quite a few of these available on the Hungarian market, in case anyone is interested .. it was a popular system in that country for a while.
The Oric-1 suffered from keys no longer responding, unless pressing harder. I brought an Atmos, used Author to write my school reports. And I still consider it as one of the nicest serious machine at the time. I sold it, replacing it with a Sinclair QL with more memory and more reliable storage.
Camputers Lynx, Tatung Einstein and Grundy Newbrain deserve their own tributes :)
Great video. More like this please. The first computer I ever saw was a friend's dad's Oric 1, I'll never forget my complete wonderment at seeing a computer - in a house - wow!
I remember seeing the Atmos in person when i was a kid and was really impressed by its looks. Still am, it's one of the best looking machines from the 80's !
Check out the Telestrat too!
I remember reading an article on the Enterprise in a physics class in college in early 83. Spec blew me away - too bad they took 2 years to launch it
Yup - I read perhaps the same article which blew me away. So now I own an Enterprise 128 !
ALL OF THEM! please do videos for all of them, I find all the historical computer stories interesting. Great video as always.
My good friend at the time was obsessed with getting the Oric-1 and it took weeks of talking him into getting the Spectrum. He thanked us later :)
That brought back some memories. I bought a kit Microtan 65 at the end of 1980 and expanded it to take floppy discs. It was a dead end so I looked at a lot of other computers before settling on the BBC B.
I remember selling the Oric-1 along with the ZX series of machines, BBC-B, Dragon 32/64 and the Jupiter Ace :D
Those were the days...
The Memotech, what a fantastic looking device - I've retro-micro envy now! Can we get a full episode, please? I remember the Orics well, friends had them. Of course, the ZXs.....plenty said about them....and plenty of time spent on them too in my school's computer club.
Best version of Gemini Man I've seen. My friend had an Enterprise. As it liked to boast: "With Obsolescence built out!" lol.
Saw the Oric 1 and Atmos for sale in Goto Computers in Slough... Always thought the Oric-1 had Tic Tacs for keys!
I learned to touch-type on that keyboard and whenever I feel it now I get all those muscle memory moments back. And when I switch to my Atmos (still got both systems, as well as a Telestrat), I find it oddly disconcerting somehow. ;P
22:32 That the thing about driving down the price, it made it possible for people to get involved with computers and upgrade as their wallet allowed and preferences allowed, and I think that's the key to it's enduring success.
Absolutely, especially when nobody you knew owned a computer. In 1980 my new Honda motorbike cost £500. Something like a TRS80 was over half that. Getting the price under £100 made buying a computer far easier to justify. As there was no real computing press in 1980 Sinclair advertised to Electronics enthusiasts in magazines like Practical Electronics, in which he had previously advertised "HiFi", Calculators and Watches.
Excellent video Neil. One thing that makes this video special is you really get a sense of scale of these machines since you’ve sat a 48k Speccy there for comparison. Brilliant idea!
I loved this episode! I have experience with five of these lovely old computers. I own a ZX80 (bright white, boxed and in mint condition), a boxed ZX81, a boxed Oric 1, and a boxed Memotech MTX 512 with the Memotech branded DMX-80 printer (also boxed!). I used to own an Atmos back in the day but sold it because I just didn't like it. I much prefer the look of the Oric 1 to be honest. I also have a mint condition, boxed, Jupiter Ace too - would love to see something about this. In fact I have quite a few home computers and associated peripherals from the 1970s and 80s, twenty-one to be precise. My latest acquisition being a Commodore PET 2001-8 from 1977. Great channel Neil, keep up the good work :-)
As a ZX81 owner, I lusted after most of these to different degrees. I remember for a while particularly wanting an MTX.
The Timex Sinclair ZX81 was sold by the thousands here in Buenos Aires, later there was also a local company named Czerweny that licensed and sold the ZX81 as well. I programmed my first game in a ZX81 of a friend of mine in the early 80s! I remember I had to keep tweaking the code to avoid running out of memory. Thank you for the great video!
Seem to remember my local John Menzies having loads of Oric-1s back in the day. Later on they stocked the Atmos too but I don't remember ever seeing them for sale anywhere else.
I was 13 years old when the Enterprise was launched and I remember reading about the specs in various magazines of the time and wanting one. Fortunately, I went in the direction of a BBC B Model 7 with various peripherals and never looked back. Very interesting times in the home computer community though. I was a member of a small (sub 1000 population) town who had a “computer club” and we had all sorts including Sharp MZ-80K, MZ-700/800, Tandy TRS-80, Commodore Pet/64/Electron and Oric Amos. Also, various Sinclair machines and later Amstrad machines. Good times!
I remember seeing an Oric 1 in a shop display cabinet here in Newcastle Australia back in 83. I would have loved to own it or any other system at the time.
I DEFINITELY want to see a video on the Memotech- never heard of it, looks like a fun machine to play with! Also definitely the Enterprise- that looks interesting. Any chance of more information on that Alice machine? I hadn't heard of it previously...
The Memotech keyboard was nothing to write home about though. Very short travel. :-(
That is the interesting thing about 1980s computing. What was happening in one country was entirely different to another. For example the Commodore Plus 4 was the computer most enthusiasts had in Hungary.
@@MrDuncl Totally right... The Spectrum, although popular, had actually a smaller following than the C64. The C16 and plus4 never even ventured here. The C128 was a bit popular...
Two massive computers here in Malta were at that time (1983-1986), the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (huge sales, and which I still use!), and the Goldstar FC-200 MSX (which I stupidly sold.. kicking myself)
Then the Amiga came out. And it was lights out for everyone else.
@@metalheadmalta You use a TI-99/4A !!! Do you have an expansion memory or something. I bought one new when they were selling them off for half the price of a Spectrum. I kept it about six months because the shared video RAM made it incredibly slow with user written programs. Its replacement was a Toshiba MSX bought for a similar price which I still have, along with the optional music keyboard. When I bought the MSX, Commodore Plus 4s were being sold off for a similar price complete with a bundle of the five games that were available for them back then. In the UK the C64 lasted as long as the Amiga as it was about 1/3rd the price and had thousands of games available for it.
@@MrDuncl I have a TI with a few games and Extended Basic. The Ext.Basic is absolutely incredible as with the sprites, you can give them a 'Call Motion' command, and you can forget about them, as they are handled by interrupts. You just change x and y 'force', and they do their own thing. This facilitates a HUGE LOT of work and obviously, speeds up the machine which is bottlenecked by TI themselves. They had, literally, a world-builder on their hands, but were too greedy to allow others to create great games. Parsec, TI-Invaders, Bigfoot and Star-Trek were absolutely incredible games, and still hold very well to this very day... I am still a mad mad fan of the 64, and have fitted a 'Leonardo Arduino' and a quad core motherboard in an empty 64 shell and use it regularly....as in DAILY
I'm 44 and I still have my Enterprise 128 from my childhood. On Hungary this machine have a fan base. You can buy an SD card adapter, new keyboard membrane, 2 MB RAM expansion and the machine is capable to handling 8 MB of memory. On the expansion port can use floppy controller, IDE HDD controller and many other stuffs. SymbOS have EP 128 support too... I think it's a great machine and I love it. :)
I loved the look and feel of the Memotech, it always seemed a solid machine in all senses of the word. I only ever saw them in Laskeys, and never knew anyone that ever actually bought one.
And the Atmos was always a very attractive computer. I never knew that the Atmos was really an Oric-1 in essence, I always assumed there was some kind of reasonable functionality/feature lift.
(I totally would have peeled that sticker off, too).
The Enterprise always came across a bit like the later Sam Coupe - seemed to be a good machine on paper but you never saw them anywhere at all.
Another great video Neil (& Keith!), many thanks!
I remember loving the look of the Oric-1 when I saw it in on display in Dixon's in the 80's. But ended up buying a Tatung Einstein as my first computer, which i used for a few years until the Amiga 500 came out. Happy days ! (I'm wondering if the Tatung was underrated in its day, as I thought it was a superb machine, but pretty much nobody remembers it !! ).
That Memotech actually kinda looks like if Sinclair designed the Commodore 64...
I remember the Oric Atmos because it was available here in Italy. It was featured in Italian computer magazines but I never saw/tried it for real
I remember all of these from back in the day, though the ZX81 was the first I got to play with at a friend's house. 23:11 The one that stood out in my memory was the Enterprise 128, saw that in "Fox's music store" at Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham, they sold musical equipment for years but tagged onto the 8-bit computer boom and stocked home computers for a while. I saw that in the shop as a child and was fascinated by it at the time, but never knew anyone that owned one.
I had an Oric 1 but it didn’t have enough variety of games so gave in and bought a spectrum.
That has changed these days - so many new titles written for the Oric-1 in the 21st Century. We even got an Elite port, Impossible Mission, School Daze and Oricium too! And did you know that the Oric-1 version of Manic Miner is widely considered the BEST version of Manic Miner ever made?
Jay Vaughan wow
My mom used to have an Oric 1. It just sat in a cupboard through the late 90s and early 2000s lol.
OMG - the Memotech MTX512. I remember reading about it in some UK trade magazine back in the day. Ahhh, the memories - thanks for this video! Great stuff!
excellent episode as always. Great production and presentation RMC
I love all of these, and would happily welcome future videos on any of them. Or you know, all of them. ;)
The MTX is just sexy, I'd give a lot to own one.. Do that one first, please.
I've always had a soft spot for the Atmos as well. Clearly 30 years ahead of the red'n'black "gamer" aesthetic, haha.
The ZX-80 will remain one of my favorite machines ever. It's so impossibly bad it boggles the mind. Bad in a good way, that is. I have the deepest respect for Sinclair, and how they managed to build and ship such incredibly cheap machines. They must've had some serious engineering talent to pull that off.
Great video, looking forwards to seeing all of them in action. :)
A friend had the ZX80. I wasn't impressed. As soon as the flicker free ZX81 was announced we both ordered one. He then sold on the ZX80 for £30.
Lot of oric atmos models ended up in ex Yugoslavia. it was mostly sold to schools there and was known as nova 64. Besides new logo, everything else was the same. It was fairly expensive so not a lot of people had it. We mostly bought spectrums and C64's smuggled from Germany
You can tell it's an Oric 1 16k by the fact it has a 48k sticker on the back, lol. The Atmos was the rarer of the 2 but you still saw quite a few of them, I worked in an early computer shop, for younger viewers a shop was like an online store but IRL, IE it was an actually building were you could walk in and 'buy' stuff and take it home with you, completely offline, IKR mind blown. But we did repairs and we got quite a few of both the Oric-1 and the Atmos, if memory serves we did sell some game for the Oric computers, I think they were compatible, it was a long time ago. The shop was City Software in Lime Street Liverpool, if anyone remembers it.
Oric Atmos 48k is still quite sexy looking machine. Had one in childhood and it's Basic was great for programming, like in MSX which i got too. Later Oric's dram-chips failed in storage, swapped those for new ones and it worked again. Sold maybe ten years ago for 70eur if i remember right. I live in Finland.
I've got a boxed and fully working Enterprise 64 that is hidden in my loft! Pretty sure I've got a monitor lead for it too. Must get it down and play with it a bit for that retro feel. You could also get a Spectrum emulator expansion box that let you load your Speccy games too! It was a great machine, released too late. Plus it was First called the ELAN, then the FLAN and finally ENTERPRISE.... Copyright issues I seem to remember. 🙄
Wanna swap an Atmos for it?
More Sam Coupe!
I had a C64, a friend of mine had an Aquarius, another one an Oric 1, another one anAlice10 and another one a Philips VG5000. The only machine of interrest in this heap was the Oric, the others were just crap and I felt like the president was my buddy with my powerfull C64. A lot of friends, their parents were teachers, were fooled by french politics and had Thomson TO7 or worse, TO9. I remeber the MTX512 and although it was named like my brother's motorbike, the quality of the machine was amazong, until the ST and the Amiga hit the market.
I remember seeing a Memotech 512 in the wild in a computer shop in Midsomer Norton in Somerset of all places when I was about 14 and lusted after it - but that was the only time I ever saw one. Still looks great to this day. I think this machine needs an in depth look.
I know it well, shout out to the Timsbury massive
I wanted an Oric 1, at the time, but my parents insisted on getting me an Amstrad CPC464, as it came with a built in tape deck, and monitor. In hindsight, they made the right choice. But still...
Commodore VIC20->CPC464->Commodore Amiga A600HD->Commodore Amiga A1200->PC
The Enterprise was my dream computer. Walked to the computer shop in my local town so many times to ask if it had come in. But it never did. Ended up with an Amstrad CPC64
I had the pleasure of getting to play with an Enterprise when I was a kid. At the time I only had access to BBC Micros at school, and a friend of my mum had one of the Enterprise machines. Thanks for covering it, I could never remember what that weirdo micro was I played with occasionally. The joystick on it is a dead give away!
I think I remember the enterprise one advertised in a computer gaming magazine. I remember the built in joystick, and thought at the time that was really cool ha ha.
I loved my Oric-1 and then Atmos. I wrote some good stuff on those, really important programming experience that then became a career, and the Atmos had a really excellent keyboard.
Still got those old tapes around? Dig 'em out and send them our way: forums.defence-force.org/
My Oric-1 survived a glass of squash being tipped over it, albeit the keys were a bit stiff afterwards.
Years later I bough an Atmos from a mate and do recall swapping some chips around.
I still have both and so would love to see something done with those two
The ORIC had a massive design flaw, in that the chip set had a problem with loading off tape. In that sometimes it would fail to load! Now the Oric ATMOS was the upgraded version and the mistake was still in the chips! wow!
Was a software problem, that was later fixed ...
I don't disagree with the Orci 1's "superb styling" claim, looks very sleek and elegant in my eyes.
Black+red coloring some 30 years before it became trendy on computers :D I totally dig that design of atmos :D
The Enterprise. I remember when it came out, reviewed in "Your Computer" magazine - they said it was out of date. They also reviewed the Oric 1 on it's release, noting how the manual was "obviously written by someone who'd never laid eyes on an Oric" and often "misleading or simply wrong".
In those years, you could expect a new PC to be released every week, and disappear within 6 months. But you never knew which would hang around - the Dragon 32, the BBC B and the Acorn Electron all took a long time to fade away.
@@Riskteven It wasn't marketed as a business machine, but to home programming hobbyists, and gamers.
Though IIRC it's display, of light green text on a dark green background, does reek of 80s office terminals.
So this may be a mis-marketed hybrid.
Absolutely. Companies with no experience in computers wanted to jump on the Bandwagon. The Oric was financed by British Car Auctions ! Even the big manufacturers were capable of blunders with machines like the Commodore Plus 4 and the Sinclair QL. Back then only Bill Gates understood the importance of Software Compatibility.
@@MrDuncl Didn't know that about the British Car Auctions funding Oric.. got more details somewhere?
Would love to see an episode on the Camputers Lynx
I remember them being about at the time, strangely the ONLY retailer I saw that stocked them in my area was a Camera Specialist. Never saw them in any of the computer retailers that sprung up.
@@jon-paulfilkins7820 they had them in Laskys, with an Apple II, Commodore +4, Spectrum 48k and an MSX.
@@Acheronus80 Must admit the Apple II was something I saw in shops only a couple of times, and like the Lynx, not at retailers you would associate with computers. I Don't remember a Laskys near me, but I am aware of the name so might mis-remember.
@@jon-paulfilkins7820 www.gremlinarchive.com/index.php/2016/05/27/laskys-catalogue-pages/
Jupiter Ace and Sam Coupe as well
Regarding the Oric Atmos, I've to point out that the AY output is definitely mono, not stereo.
Now, I've a question: You mentioned that on the Atmos it was possible to enter BASIC commands using one single key-press, are you sure of that? How does that work?
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you for sharing.
This is a really cool video! Subscribed!
Excellent video. Brought back fond memories, so thank you for that. 😀
Great clip...very interesting, would be nice to have seen them boot up and a program loaded. But I really enjoyed this. Great work.😊
Excellent video guys, I thoroughly enjoyed that. The MTX is a really nicely designed micro!
Due to electrical codes, in the UK every AC outlet in home wiring had a separate power switch, so some manufacturers felt they can leave it off the machine. But the outlet switch, maybe down on the baseboard, was not always convenient to operate.
Great to see these, I must have been swayed by the unusual in my youth as I waited a year for the Enterprise to be released, before finally giving up and bought an Oric instead, with the terrible keyboard, but I have fond memories as it was the first micro I bought. My parents ran Datapen Microtechnology making lightpens for micro's so I had a dream childhood with C64, Vic 20, BBC, Spectrum, Dragon 32 and my personal favorite Amstrad CPC464, although nothing beats the BBC playing Elite for pure Nostalgia. Ended up with an Atari STFM before the rise of PC clones wiped out this wonderful time for home micros that ran from my mid teens through to my early 20's. Great to see the Enterprise getting a deeper look in recent episodes, and the nostalgia from these is just intoxicating - A big thank you.
Fantastic, the history of microcomputers made in the United Kingdom is quite rich and even today I still have one of the biggest global successes, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and ZX-81 and their locally manufactured clones..
Neil, you and Keith are great! Another great video taking me back in time! You guys are fab. 👍🏻
Thanks Gaz
I still think the Oric Atmos is one of the sexiest micros ever created!
What about the Matra Alice, sexy name and sexy red
The small french red computer you show is an Alice. It is actually a Tandy/Radio-Shack MC-10 built under license by Matra. However, there had been 8-bit computers designed in France: Thomson TO7 and MO5, Hector HRX, Exelvision EXL100, Goupil.
Amazing episode! Thanks!
Retro Cave Man definitely one the most informative retro channels. I'd like to see more of the Memotech. I'd never heard of it before this video. Cheers for the upload.
fantastic episode Neil seeing these machines once again has made my day i wanted all of these back in the day. Memotech knew how to build a computer and the asthetics are perfect, i would like to see an episode dedicated to this micro.......thank you for this production @@@kim@@@
Thanks Kim. Memotech episode coming right up for you sir
Got to admit that when I wanted my first computer, for what I could afford, it was a 2 horse race between the Spectrum or Oric 1, and the Oric 1 was very tempting. Of course if money was no Object, it would have been an Atari 800 due to it's flexibility and power (the C=64 had yet to arrive in the UK shops). Other competitors about then I remember were the Dragon, the then new BBC Micro and the Texas Instruments Machine. Just about everything else was older and seemed to be coming to the end of its life (Vic 20, ZX81, Acorn Atom and a few other odd balls like the New Brain that I did not see in the shops).
I had the Texas Instruments TI-99 4A. Without the add on rack and expansion memory card what a disaster that computer was. The only computer in which the RAM wasn't connected to the CPU. They assumed you would run all games from their cartridges. I bought it from John Lewis on close out for £60 (less than half the price of a Spectrum) and sold it about 6 months later for £30 to buy an MSX.
If I had that Memotech while in school, damn be good to show it off, but for the lack of software though lol.. least I was the only one in my school with a Vectrex.. and it still works!!
Awesome selection of hardware, always wanted the Enterprise but never come across one in decent enough condition. And great meeting and chatting to you at Revival Neil.
Oh, I remember that box.The Oric-1 was the first computer I owned, it was really a weird beast, even more so over here in Germany. Even the Spectrum was more popular here.
Would love to hear more about German Oric-1 users ..
@@ibisum I only had it for a year when I was 8. I remember programming some simple Basic stuff on it and had a few games like Q-bert. I remember constantly struggling with saving and loading tapes which was awfully unreliable. My dad called it a piece of garbage, sold it and then gave me an Atari 800XL for my 9th birthday, which felt like a massive improvement for me at the time.
Odd to hear Francois Lionett and STOS getting mentioned. Takes me back to my ST days and the STOS extensions my friend Billy and I wrote.
The Elan/Flan Enterprise; built in Perth. Scotland. We had a working 3.5" disk drive and I remember we built a dedicated word processor from an Enterprise board and an old terminal - worked surprisingly well using the built in word processor package. As they say in the article, a great computer if it had come out 18 months earlier. I bought a couple of the leftover machines plus a cub monitor from the assembly line when it closed down but unfortunately they've long gone. I still come across the odd enterprise part in my scrap collection though. Glad a few machines still survive intact!
I live near swindon, have visited the museum before and loved how much stuff they have there.
Would love to see something on the Camputers Lynx series of machines. Really enjoyed this ‘Show n Tell’ 👍