Andy asked me to do a little piece on the Cumana Reborn that I recently bought with the help of @Klyde . So here is a bit of a small rundown on the device and it's history. So as you probably know the Oric-1 never got a disk drive, it wasn't released until the Atmos came out. The Microdisk was in the same colour scheme as the Atmos. It used the same 3" disks as the Amstrad CPC and the Spectrum +3 which given the age of them hold up pretty well as they are a rigid plastic case as opposed to 5.25" floppies. Cumana was a company that made floppy drives and interfaces for various computers and for the Oric they made a nice floppy disk interface that used 3.5" disks. In the 90's when I was part of OUM somehow one of the gang had acquired all the Cumana interface parts and cases. I was able to buy one and get it built and used a loose 3.5" disk drive. Sedoric became the most popular DOS for the Oric and is a really good DOS for 8-Bit computers in general and still gets periodic updates. So the Cumana Reborn takes the PCB of the Cumana interface and the PCB of a Gotek Floppy emulator and combines the two into one form factor. The original Cumana PCB was based on through hole technology where this modern version uses SMD parts to enable the PCB to be shrunk down. So you use a USB stick to store the Oric disk images and load and save them as you would if there was a real disk connected. The Cumana loads a full 48K Oric game in seconds and is 100% more reliable than the notorious cassette interface. The Cumana Reborn is made by Zaxon who makes a lot of devices for various computers like @nysavant DDI5 for his CPC464. So here are some photos of it working and loading software. Sorry about the glare on the monitor but it was quite sunny.
It's a very nice looking device, and I can testify to the loading speeds as Richie was good enough to give me a little demo when I popped in the other day.
I didn't get to show you some of the other demos I had as the sound on the Oric can be quite loud on full blast and Sonia was working or on Teams calls. I think I managed to prove the Oric is a neat little machine though . How did the Expo go by the way?
Nice add on Richie, only gripe is that the ribbon cable is doing my head in with my OCD Why did it have to be scrunched up Forgive me, just back from the vet and a tad bothered, explained on the front page of the forum Anyway, nice to see the old gear getting some love, well done..
The Play Expo was okay Richie, I didn't bother playing any of the micros or coin-ops and headed straight for the sales market but it wasn't as good as previous years. Spent most of the time talking to the Pixel/Amiga Addict guys and there's was the only stall I bought anything from. I'm maybe a bit spoiled nowadays by having my own wee retro collection and Forgotten Worlds nearby so the shows don't hold just as much appeal. I reckon that is the last Expo I will attend. Next year I might go along to one or two of the Crash/Zzap/Amiga shows though.
Sorry I haven't had chance to chip in as yet on this thread but thank you very much for demo-ing the Cumana Reborn set-up Richie and I know already from messages from Al that he is really quite impressed now by the Oric's capabilities even though they'll never quite be in the C64/800XLs/CPC464s range of music, sounds and graphics league, it can definitely outperform the Speccy, Dragon 32 and match others of that generation in many areas, eg Atmos keyboard easily as good as the Electron's. Yeah, been real busy this week and will continue to be as lots of friends & family to see, wedding reception at weekend and then orf on our jollies for a wee break for a week as Bev desperate for some time away from the NHS frontline... before the worst of the winter demands/strains hit the wards etc. Hope all is well for you guys and that you, Paul, get some better news/better vet's to help you with Thumbs, bless her.
Next year, Al, we'll try and meet up at a Retro Show together, mate - that'll get tongues wagging on here!! PMSL
