Oric-1 owners hoping to upgrade to the Atmos may have a long wait.

At the moment Oric itself does not know exactly what the upgrade will consist of, how much it will cost, or exactly when it will be available. All the company could say was that it would be two to three months before the upgrade service would be offered.

Reliable sources point to several of the raw materials.

It also needs more time to set up a mass production procedure for the upgrade. Since new casings and ROMs are already available in Atmos form, PCN can't see the need for such a substantial delay. Rumours that the delay is being caused by problems with the Atmos's ROM were also denied by Oric.

On the equally thorny subject of forthcoming disk drives, Oric said that they were in production, but that all dealer's orders were being met first.

A February 4 demo of the drives to the press was subsequently cancelled. Since then no more has been heard of the drives. They were first due to be launched six months ago, and said by a spokesman at the Which Computer? Show to be in production over a month before that.

Oric is now advertising the drives as being available at several high street stores. But PCN couldn't find any at Dixons, which said it had none, and didn't know when it would. Laskys also had none, but had been told by an Oric representative that they would be available in the next few weeks. One of the chains in the advert, Rumbelows, hasn't yet been told about the disk drives, and said that if it were going to have them available in the next month it would know about it now.

A feature of Oric's new image (exemplified by the Atmos) was to have been more reliable delivery guarantees under the new regime.