Tangerine Micron

The Tangerine Micron was a ready-built complete version of the modular Microtan 65 system. It combined the Microtan processor board and TANEX expansion on a two-slot motherboard inside a finished case with a full ASCII keyboard.

Compared with the bare-board kit, the Micron supplied a practical general-purpose computer while preserving access to cassette storage, Microsoft BASIC, additional ROM and I/O. It was aimed at users who wanted Tangerine’s flexibility without constructing the entire machine themselves.

Notable Features

• Factory-built case and full ASCII keyboard made the Microtan architecture ready to use.
• Two-slot mini-motherboard joined the Microtan 65 and TANEX boards.
• TANEX supplied buffered expansion, cassette, ROM sockets and configurable serial/parallel I/O.

Historical Significance

• Turned Tangerine’s enthusiast single-board computer into a packaged personal system.
• An intermediate step between expandable kit computers and Tangerine’s later mass-market Oric machines.

Collector’s Notes

• Memory, I/O chips and ROM contents could still vary according to the TANEX configuration ordered.
• The orange-and-black case, keyboard and two original boards define a complete Micron.

Specifications

Technical Information
Name	Tangerine Micron
Manufacturer	Tangerine Computer Systems
Launched	Thursday, January 1, 1981
Launch Price	£395
Country	United Kingdom
CPU	MOS Technology 6502 at 0.75 MHz
Units Sold
Operating System	TANBUG/XBUG; optional Microsoft BASIC, TANDOS and TANFORTH
I/O	Serial and parallel options, cassette and Microtan expansion
Keyboard	Full ASCII keyboard
Storage	Cassette through TANEX; optional disk system
Sound	Software or expansion-dependent sound
Graphics	64 x 64 chunky graphics; optional high-resolution expansion
Display	32 x 16 monochrome text
ROM	TANBUG/XBUG with optional 10KB Microsoft BASIC
RAM	Configuration-dependent; typically expanded beyond the Microtan’s 1KB
CPU Speed	0.75 MHz