Oric have attempted to put old wrongs right. Bob Maunder measures their success.

Oric could not have chosen a worse time to unveil its new Atmos. It must have seemed a suitable occasion - mid-January when everyone had recovered from Christmas festivities, and at the 'Which Computer' Show when very little else for the micro hobbyist would appear.

And then came Sinclair's QL, and the Atmos was knocked off the first pages of the micro magazines.

Despite this inauspicious birth, the Atmos does have a good family history. It was conceived to replace the Oric-1 which appeared on the market end of 1982, and grew from the expertise of Tangerine, specialists in kit systems.

The Oric-1 was a novel and attractive machine and particularly drew acclaim for its sound facilities. It was thoughtfully designed, with a monitor as well as television output, and a standard Centronics port to which many types of printers could be directly connected. However, there were early criticisms of bugs in the ROM, and Oric Products were quick to reply that a new ROM was on its way. Nevertheless, Oric observers did not expect a new machine encapsulating the ROM.

The Atmos has a dashing red and black livery with a professional keyboard. Even the old Oric logo is restyled with a red go-faster stripe. For £169.95 the buyer gets a 48K Atmos, mains connector, TV and cassette DIN leads, manual and introductory cassette. There are no immediate plans to produce a 16K model for the UK market, though this could change if there is sufficient demand. Also included is a voucher allowing £40 off Oric's colour printer, continuing the offer on the Oric-1.

A further insert advertises the Oric User Group and its magazine 'Oric Computing'. Is this a dimunition in loyalty to Tansoft's useful 'Oric Owner' magazines, an issue of which used to be given away free with the Oric-1, and was developing into a user group format? The new OUG appears free from organisational ties with Oric, and its magazine is designed more for the enthusiast.

The 294-page manual was the next mode of approach. It was written by Ian Adamson and published for Oric by Pan. It is aeons ahead of the Oric-1 manual in terms of technical detail, containing lots of facts and figures on system variables, memory organisation, ROM routines and so on. Its twelve appendices contain information for which many Oric-1 owners would have happily sold their grannies. Gone, howevfer, are the cartoons, the bad jokes and the typesetting errors which graced the Oric-1 manual. Some readers might find the approach too technical, but those already familiar with Basic will find it very satisfactory.

More details examination reveals the machine's radical restyling to be a little cosmetic. The shape and dimensions are those of the Oric-1, with the chunky wedge-shaped unit angling the keys nicely for the user. Only the top moulding is new while the plastic moulding of the base and sides is identical to that of its predecessor. The stippling at the top left of the keyboard is not a speaker grill but merely adornment - the speaker grill remains on the base.

The key layout differs in only one respect, an extra FUNCT key appearing at the bottom right, but of course the keys themselves are now full size. FUNCT is not documented in the manual and apparently it is not used by the Atmos system software (available 'for future expansion' according to Oric technical staff). Normal characters are on black keys while cursor movement, shift, control, delete, function and return keys are red. The redesigned case-top now labels the back connectors, namely, from left to right, power (9V DC) in, expandion edge connector. Centronics parallel port, tape DIN, monitor DIN, and TV output. The RESET key is concealed at the bottom of the case and is inaccessible without long sharpened fingernails or a pencil. It is unfortunate that an on/off switch was not included.

When switched on, the Atmos identifies itself with a message 'ORIC EXTENDED BASIC V1.1' and shows how much memory is available by '37631 BYTES FREE' for the 48K model. Certainly the new ROM is more honest than that in the Oric-1, which used to claim '47480 BYTES FREE', totally ignoring those bytes gobbled up by system variables and the screen display. Having switched on, the reviewer turns to the supplied cassette, pleasantly labelled 'WELCOME TO ORIC ATMOS', with CLOAD"",s on one side and CLOAD"" on the other, but lacking further instructions for use. On typing in the appropriate command, the message 'Searching...' appears at the top of the screen, soon followed by 'Loading * C' and then 'Ready'. Instinct further dictates the typing of 'RUN', giving the disappointing result of another 'Ready' message. Further attempts with the cassette on the other side, wound on, and with other recorders still proved fruitless, and as the manual gave no information on the 'WELCOME' cassette, it did not live up to its title.

To avoid boring Oric-1 experts it is perhaps best to consider the language of the Atmos in two parts. First consider how it differs from that of its predecessor, and then look at the features carried over. A Basic keyword summary is shown in Table 1.

There are only two new keywords, namely STORE and RECALL. STORE saves the contents of an array on cassette, and options are available for real, integer or string arrays and in faster or slow recording modes. RECALL is the accompanying command for loading the array from tape into memory.

Other commands and instructions have been improved upon. CLOAD now has 'J' and 'v' options, i.e. joining and verifying respectively. The join facility allows a program from tape to be appended to that currently in memory: the modules are not merged, and duplicate or lower line-numbers in the joined section are not allowed. The verify option lists any errors resulting from storing information on tape with CSAVE, CLOAD will also give more messages on the screen - it lists programs or data by name as they are encountered on tape, and can produce an 'Errors found' message on a faulty load. It even shows whether the program being loaded is in Basic or machine code. One final supplement is to the PRINT instruction. PRINTing at a specified screen position is now available with the @ option followed by column and line values (low-resolution modes only).

Many of us were keen on the old Oric-1, warts and all, but the bugs have been dealt a mortal blow on the new machine. The most infamous vermin, the TAB bug is no more, although the user must remember the tabbed position must be counted from the first protected column position.

Other former problems such as the errant ELSE and the spurious STR$ have also been cleared up.

Calculations. Numbers are assigned values using the normal LET statement (with or without the LET keyword) and all the normal operators and functions are available. String handling follows the Microsoft standards with LEFT$, RIGHT$ and MID$ functions providing slicing operations. Concatenation and string comparison also appear.

Conditions and Loops. The IF THEN instruction with its optional ELSE clause, now bug-free, allows conditions to be tested. The computed jump and subroutine call ON-GOTO and ON-GOSUB extend this facility. WAIT causes program execution to pause for a given multiple of ten milliseconds. Two constructs enable to repeat sections of code, FOR-NEXT and REPEAT-UNTIL...

Subroutines and Functions. Basic subroutines are invoked by GOSUB while machine code routines use CALL or the USR function. The full list of string and numeric functions are at the programmer's fingertips, plus a useful decimal-to-hexadecimal convertor function HEX$. A novel feature is the ability to define your own function in machine-code and invoke it by '&'. This is the low level equivalent of Basic's DEF FN which is also provided. A similar facility to the & function is used to define a new instruction.

Machine Level. In addition to the great advantage of & and !, the machine-code aficionado can also use PEEK and POKE and their two-byte equivalents DEEK and DOKE. Coupled with CALL, USR and HEX$ these provide a formidable arsenal of machine level power. As all this was on the Oric-1, one could never understand why the manufacturers gave away so little about the guts of the ROM. This has now been remedied - the Atmos manual reveals all.

Sound. Shoot-'em-up fans will continue to delight in the sound features of the Atmos, identical to those of the Oric-1. Predefined sounds EXPLODE, PING, SHOOT and ZAP provide great attention-grabbing noises, SOUND, MUSIC and PLAY give a full range of musical and non-musical sounds for the more serious user.

Graphics. Oric-1 sales literature took the unusual approach of making a great virtue of its graphics features, though its method of using serial attributes was rather primitive. This method is again carried over to the Atmos. The theory is that the machine works at two graphics resolutions, low (27 lines of 40 characters) and high (200 by 240 pixels). Colours, double height or flashing symbols are set up by placing special non-printing characters at screen positions preceding where their effect is to take place. Subsequent 'attribute' characters may alter the effect of previous ones. This approach is the same as on Prestel.

The great advantage is that much less memory is used up, compared with most other low-cost micros, but the disadvantage is that complex colourful screens can be a nuisance to set up. If the Oric modem had appeared earlier this teletext-compatibility would have been much more reasonable. As it is, the modem is not mentioned in the Atmos brochure, though the printer and forthcoming micro disks are.

The Atmos has three low-resolution modes. In TEXT and LORES0, the 27 x 40 screen can be modified by PLOT and PRINT. The new PRINT @ feature effectively extends what PLOT did on the Oric-1, but PLOT is still preserved. LORES1 displays all characters as Prestel-style graphics block. HIRES invokes a 200 x 240 grid with a couple of lines at the base of the screen for messages.

Cassette Handling. Two speeds of loading (CLOAD) and saving (CSAVE) on cassette make the Atmos very flexible with most recorders. Most Oric-1 software suppliers send out their programs recorded in both modes and no doubt this will continue for the Atmos. Oric-1 Basic programs on cassette will not load correctly onto the Atmos - the Basic is compatible but the system variables are not. CLOAD's extensions of joining and verifying look useful.

Control Codes. A number of control characters give handy system functions. CTRL T switches between upper and lower case (a new CAPS key would have been better), CTRL F toggles the audible keyclick on and off, CTRL L clears the screen and the more obscure CTRL S can switch off the display. All these codes are accessible from programs as well. Control characters and cursor movement keys are used in editing, not one of the machine's best features.

Having seen that the Atmos and its predecessor have almost identical Basic, massive innovations in hardware are not to be expected.

The base lifts off to reveal... a board with the insignia 'ORIC-1 designed by Tangerine Computer Systems'. It is the issue 4 Oric-1 board containing the single ROM chip as IC9, the only difference being that the ROM is labelled ORIC BASIC V1.1 instead of V1.0.

The overall memory map of the Atmos is yet another feature identical to the Oric-1. The ROM occupies a slot at the top of memory from address C000 hex onwards. Experiments with a few memory display routines reveal that data tables remain in the old Oric-1 positions, give or take a few bytes.

Many of the ROM routines have different start addresses on the Atmos and this means that most machine code programs written for the Oric-1 will require changes. Apparently, most software houses have been told about the proposed changes well in advance, so Atmos software should appear very soon. Much of the Oric-1 convoluted code seems to have been untangled and this results in more efficient processing. A few simple timed tests matching the Atmos against an aging version-3 Oric-1 proved the Atmos to be up to twice as fast.

The MCP-40 Printer/Plotter has been refurbished in the new Atmos livery, but remains the same inside. The long-awaited Microdiscs also appear in the Atmos brochure in red and black. These have not been examined but their specification looks impressive. They are pukka disks, not tape cartridges, and are in the Hitachi 3" format. 160K can be stored on each side and a transfer rate of 250 Kbits per second is quoted.

The Oric Atmos carries on the Oric-1 tradition with a few changes. All the laudable features remain, keeping it well ahead of many other machines despite changes in the market over the past year. The niggling errors and inconsistencies of its predecessors seem to have been cleared up too, and the keyboard is much easier to use.

Oric-1 owners waking up to find their micros outdated may be encouraged to know that an upgrade service is planned, whereby an Oric-1 may be equipped with a new keyboard and ROM for around £50.

The Atmos sits uneasily at £169.95 between the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 both in price and capabilities. If the Microdiscs live up to expectations, the Atmos should prove to be a good step forward for its manufacturers.

I don't see how anyone can call the Atmos a new product. Put bluntly, it's repackaged and slightly improved Oric-1. Apart from PRINT @ and a few new file-handling commands (which some say should have been included in the original machine) it has the same features as the Oric-1.

Most of the bugs in the old ROM have been ironed out, but TAB still prints spaces instead of just moving the cursor. The serial attribute system is still used in exactly the same way and even the screen addresses are the same.

Several of the ROM routines' addresses have been altered, which means that some software with CALLs to the ROM will hang up.

Despite the fact that the Oric's been around for almost a year, there's still precious little software available for it compared with machines like the Spectrum or Dragon, while programs for the 16K Oric are as rare as hens' teeth.

If you choose to upgrade your Oric-1 to an Atmos, all you get for the £50 conversion fee is a new ROM, a red case and a different keyboard. £50 seems rather steep.

At £170 for a 48K micro, the Atmos is considerably more expensive than its competition. Being so similar to the Oric-1, it offers much the same competition to machines with similar features are the Oric-1 did - virtually none.

If Oric Products International want to be successful in the micro market they'd do well to try to gloss over the initial setback of producing the Oric-1 and come up with something really new.

Bryan Skinner