(Renamed from Pugo-Oric 2026)

This project implements an Oric computer emulator with graphics, sound, tape and disk support. All code is written from scratch.

It is my absolutely slowest project, just made out of love to programming and to my first computer.

Background

This is the result of a very long and low intensive hobby project I have worked on since 2009, which currently is 17 years.

The purpose was to develop an emulator of the first computer I ever got, as a Christmas gift some 40 years ago. The computer was an Oric 1, and it was fantastic back then!

There already is a brilliant emulator of Oric: Oricutron. The purpose of my emulator is not to compete, but to learn more about how emulators work and to close the circle by learning more about the computer I got as a kid.

Building

Auric has been developed and tested on Linux and MacOS. It should be possible to build it on Windows as well, but I have not tried that.

All building instructions are located in the doc directory.

• To build with vcpkg, see doc/BUILD_VCPKG.md.
• To build with host libraries, see doc/BUILD_HOST.md.

Running

This section describes how to run the emulator.

ROM files

The program currently looks for ROM files from the ROMS directory in the project root. It expects the following ROM files to exist.

ROM file name	Description
basic10.rom	Oric 1 ROM (for Oric 1 mode)
basic11b.rom	Oric Atmos ROM (for Atmos mode)
microdis.rom	For Microdisc disc drive emulation

I plan to add a configuration file options to specify ROM locations and ROM file names.

Starting the emulator

$ ./build/auric

Command line arguments

Run the emulator with flag -? (or --help) to see available parameters.

$ ./build/auric -?

Usage: auric [options]
Allowed options:
  -? [ --help ]          produce help message
  -z [ --zoom ] arg (=3) window zoom 1-10 (default: 3)
  -m [ --monitor ]       start in monitor mode
  -1 [ --oric1 ]         use Oric 1 mode (default: Atmos mode)
  -d [ --disk ] arg      disk image file to use
  -t [ --tape ] arg      tape image file to use
  -v [ --verbose ]       verbose logging output

Control keys

The following control keys can alter the emulator behavior.

• F1: Toggle main menu
• F2: Save snapshot (to RAM)
• F3: Load snapshot (from RAM)
• CTRL-W: Toggle warp mode (go as fast as possible, speed up tape loading, etc.)
• CTRL-R: Soft reset the emulator (NMI)
• CTRL-B: Break to debugger (in console).

Loading from tape image

To specify which tape TAP file to use, use the --tape or -t command line argument:

$ ./build/auric --tape taps/hunchbk.tap

To load a tape program from the emulator you can try the following.

CLOAD"

To speed up the loading time it is possible to toggle warp mode with F12.

Loading from disk image

Auric support loading from Microdisk images.

To specify which tape TAP file to use, use the --disk or -d command line argument:

$ ./build/auric --disk disk/oricpetscii.dsk

Exiting

Since the emulator does not have any GUI with interaction at this point the best way is to simply close the window.

It is also possible to press ctrl-c in the terminal window where the emulator was started. On the first press of ctrl-c the emulator will enter the monitor mode. See the monitor section below for more information about the monitor. To exit for real, press ctrl-c a second time.

Monitor

You can at any time enter a small monitor mode by pressing ctrl-c in the terminal or by pressing ctrl-b inside the emulator.

The monitor has commands like the following.

Available monitor commands:

ay              : print AY-3-8912 sound chip info
bs <address>    : set breakpoint for address
d               : disassemble from last address or PC
d <address> <n> : disassemble from address and n bytes ahead (example: d c000 10)
debug           : show debug output at run time
g               : go (continue)
g <address>     : go to address and run (example: g 1f00)
h               : help (showing this text)
i               : print machine info
m <address> <n> : dump memory from address and n bytes ahead (example: m 1f00 20)
pc <address>    : set program counter to address
quiet           : prevent debug output at run time
q               : quit
s [n]           : step one or possible n steps
sr, softreset   : soft reset oric
v               : print VIA (6522) info

Timeline

As I work as a developer this has been a project I have gone back to for shorter stints when normal work for some reason have had less amount of coding. That means that this project has been extremely slow. But that has always been a wonderful thing! I have never felt any pressure to work on it and instead hacked on it by pure love.

The first thing I developed was naturally the MOS 6502 emulation. That took several years of now-and-then coding. Then after some delay the MOS 6522 VIA (IO) chip work started and took some more years. After that I added graphics support, keyboard emulation, tape loading and lastly sound.

The timeline is something like:

• 2009: MOS 6502 CPU
• 2014: MOS 6522 VIA
• 2016: Graphics
• 2017: Key input
• 2020: Tape loading
• 2023: AY3-8912 sound
• 2024: Cycle bug fixing, new monitor, blink mode, snapshots
• 2025: Satus bar, new tape loading, zoom
• 2026: Microdisk loading, renaming project, moved to SDL3

Contribution

Since this is a pet project I work on it only when I like to. Up to this point noone has wanted to contribute, but at this stage it could be fun to cooperate!

The project exists on GitHub: https://github.com/pugo/Auric

License

All code is licensed with GPL v3.

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Sweden, Linghem 2026, Anders Piniesjö