Hi Everyone!

Here it’s time for a new project! (Why do I hear someone telling me that I already have too many project?)

So I’m prout to present you the OricMouse, a new opensource project for the Oric line of product that will add a Mouse input to the Oric!

The origin of this project come from Chema’s OASIS Project that you will find on the Defence-Force forum. OASIS is a game engine largely inspired by SCUMMVM and reading the topic I was thinking “this project need a mouse to be much more fun!”

This was about a bit more than 1 month, and I had a lot of thing to do at that time, especially because the RGC2015 was coming up. Last weekend I’ve started to work on this project, and made the first Schematic and PCB revision at that time. I’ve arranged the PCB design a bit since, as I’m waiting for some component to come before sending the PCB to be manufactured for sample.

So here is the basic properties of the OricMouse:

• Powered by a Parallax Propeller
• Provide 2 PS2 port, compatible with either mouse and keyboard
• Provide 1 ADB connector (old Apple connector for mouse and keyboard, and more)
• Firmware upgradable from the Oric
• Also the firmware can be temporarily changed on the fly by the Oric
• Extension port to add more features
• A real Reset button on the PCB!
• Mounted 90 degrees from the Oric
• Passthrough of the expansion connector (so you could plug a Cumulus, Microdisc, Jasmin, …. after it)
• Does not need an AmpliBus
• Open Source
• All made of Through-hole component so easy to solder
• And I hope cheap (will try to make is lower than 40€)

What is does not:

• Emulate a floppy disk
• Provide an external ROM
• Work as an AmpliBus

As the firmware can be changed on the fly, it allow lots of possibility, as, the Expansion port could accept lots of different hardware, compatible with of course (Ethernet, Wifi, RS232, …) and the 3 DIN connector could be connected to something different from the original intent, there are a few limitation on them, but it’s not impossible to repurpose.

Also as an open source hardware project, it is shared on GitHub:
https://github.com/986-Studio/OricMouse

I still need to push the latest changes, but it’s not that urgent right now as I don’t have the 2 component that I need to be sure that they will fit the design, and then, the prototype could be build 🙂

Please consider the licence of this project as a BSD 4 clauses like, you can use this project for your own need (privately or publicly) but need to acknowledge that you use part of this project, don’t need to redistribute your changes as OSHW (but it would be really appreciated), and I ask that you do not use the OricMouse name for  any commercial purpose, and if you fork my project, to use your own name which is not a direct derivative of OricMouse.