The Oric-1 was released in January 1983 by Tangerine Computer Systems, a British company already known for its 6502-based boards. Sold for around a hundred pounds, with a 6502A, 16 or 48 KB of memory and a rubber-key keyboard, it aimed squarely at the ZX Spectrum. Its in-house ULA gives it a more colourful display than the Sinclair's, but the first ROM suffers from well-known flaws, particularly in its tape handling.
The Oric Atmos, introduced in 1984, put that right: a proper mechanical keyboard, the now-iconic black and red case, and above all the BASIC 1.1 ROM, which fixes a good share of the 1.0 problems. It is that machine which gives the Recalbox system its name.
The Oric was especially successful in France, where the brand was taken over by Eureka Informatique and then ASN: a large part of the library is French, with titles such as L'Aigle d'Or and Le Manoir du Docteur Génius. The range went on with the Telestrat, aimed at videotex, and was cloned in Bulgaria as the Pravetz 8D — two machines whose ROMs appear in the BIOS list below. The Oric development scene is still active today and keeps producing new games.
| Manufacturer | Tangerine |
| Year | 1984 |
| Type | Computer |
| Keyboard | Mandatory |
| Controller | Mandatory |
📷 Screenshot coming soon:
system-oricatmos.png
The Oric / Atmos is emulated by a single core, available on every board:
The machine emulated by default is the Atmos, with the Microdisc floppy controller, the original one. Your controllers are mapped automatically to the machine's joysticks 1 and 2. Netplay is not available on this system and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled.
A keyboard is mandatory on this system: the Oric boots into its BASIC interpreter, and loading a tape or starting a program goes through commands typed on the keyboard. Most games also expect a controller.
System ROMs are expected in /recalbox/share/bios/oricutron/. Eight of them are mandatory; the other two only serve additional floppy controllers.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|
oricutron/basic10.rom |
BASIC 1.0 — Oric-1 ROM | ebe418ec8a6c85d5ac32956c9a96c179 | Yes |
oricutron/basic11b.rom |
BASIC 1.1b — Atmos ROM | a330779c42ad7d0c4ac6ef9e92788ec6 | Yes |
oricutron/microdis.rom |
Microdisc floppy controller | df864344d2a2091c3f952bd1c5ce1707 | Yes |
oricutron/jasmin.rom |
Jasmin floppy controller | 5136f764a7dbd1352519351fbb53a9f3 | Yes |
oricutron/pravetzt.rom |
Pravetz 8D ROM | 8712a22e7e078de3343667d9fc1f2390 | Yes |
oricutron/teleass.rom |
Telestrat — Telass assembler | 2324c9cc227c1327a72a667c97ed2990 | Yes |
oricutron/hyperbas.rom |
Telestrat — HyperBASIC | 364bf095e0dc4222d75354d50b8cddfc | Yes |
oricutron/telmon24.rom |
Telestrat — Telemon 2.4 monitor | 9a432244d9ee4a49e8ddcde64af94e05 | Yes |
oricutron/bd500.rom |
BD-500 floppy controller | 2b6498fd29a0adbf1c529762c02c33ab | No |
oricutron/8dos2.rom |
Pravetz 8D DOS | 5f3cd5a4307fed7a9dfe8faa4c044273 | No |
The BIOS checker lets you verify that they are present and that their hashes match.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/oricatmos/
Accepted extensions: .tap .dsk
.tap is a tape image, the most common medium on the Oric; .dsk is a floppy image, loaded through the Microdisc controller. .zip archives are not accepted: uncompress your games before copying them over.
Recalbox ships with two Oric games, both from the modern scene: Oricium, a horizontally scrolling shoot'em up by José María Enguita, and Pulsoids, a brick breaker by Twilighte. Each comes with a pad-to-keyboard file so it can be played straight away with a controller, without touching the keyboard. The full list of bundled games is on the Included games page.