Sometimes you buy stuff on eBay and you get disappointed (broken or incomplete things, ...) but sometimes you discover some little gems you did not even know existed.

A few weeks ago I bought some Oric games, and on a whim asked the seller if he had some other Oric related stuff around. All he had was the Oric Special Autumn 1984 issue of Personal Software, but that seemed interesting enough for me to buy it as well.

Personal Software

This 100 pages magazine contains adds, reviews of the Oric 1 and Atmos, numerous type-in programs, all Oric related.

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"Colour computing for less than £100? The Oric offers this and more."
- Oric Review

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I find interesting that a late 1984 magazine contains two reviews, one for the Oric 1 and one for the Oric Atmos.

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"Oric have given their Micro a facelift. But are the changes purely cosmetic?"
- Atmos Review

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I would have thought that by this time the Oric 1 was already old news :)

In any case, it's a fully packed magazine, well worth the price I believe.

Tansoft Software

Inside the magazine was a four pages full-color advertising material from Tansoft, the typical kind of thing sent to shops to inform them on the available products, software as well as hardware, with the indicative price range.

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"The new Oric Atmos re-affirms Tansoft's belief that the only justification for the support of one home Computer is that Oric has the recipe for unrivalled success."
- Hardware page

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Interestingly the Oric Atmos 48k is priced at £170.00 while the Oric Atmos 16k is "T.B.A."!

As expected, the usual Tansoft classic games are presented:

• Defence Force (£7.95)
  
• Ultima Zone (£8.50)
  
• Oric Munch (£7.95)
  
• Super-Advanced Breakout (£4.50)
  
• Rat-Splat (£7.95)
  

all prices including VAT of course.

Beginner's Guide

And then, inside the Tansoft document was this three-colored (white, black and of course red) document called "A Beginner's Guide To The Oric Atmos".

I've never seen that one before, so I'm not quite sure about where and when it was distributed, for sure there was no equivalent in the French Oric Atmos boxes.

Beginner's Guide Front Cover

The front cover is very reminiscent of the Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy with the very friendly "Help" message.

Beginner's Guide Left Inside Page

The first inside page is all about how to connect your computer to your screen and tape drive.

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"Underneath your Oric computer you'll find the RESET button: it's an emergency device which allows you to stop a program without destroying the contents of the memory."

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Beginner's Guide Right Inside Page

The second page is a mostly useless explanation about programming in BASIC without actually showing any BASIC code... utterly confusing :D

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"Learning to use a computer involves a great deal of time and effort. If you get stuck don't panic, just refer to the manual - it's all in there.

What more is there to say, except have fun."

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Beginner's Guide Back Cover

And finally, the back cover, with a glossary of computer terms.

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"POKE
A basic command used to 'poke' (or type) a value directly into desired memory location."

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