Tangerine Microtan 65

The Tangerine Microtan 65 was a British single-board computer designed for hobbyists, laboratories and equipment developers. Its 6502 processor, video display and TANBUG monitor formed a small starting point that could grow through an extensive modular bus.

Owners could add the TANEX expansion board, ASCII keyboard, Microsoft BASIC, cassette interfaces, memory, high-resolution graphics and disk storage. The architecture and engineering experience later contributed to Tangerine’s Oric home computers.

Notable Features

• Hardware single-step facility aided low-level program development and debugging.
• 80-pin expansion bus supported memory, I/O, graphics and disk-controller boards.
• Available as a kit or assembled board with hexadecimal keypad or optional ASCII keyboard.

Historical Significance

• One of Britain’s important late-1970s 6502 development computers.
• Created the technical and user-community foundations from which the Oric range emerged.

Collector’s Notes

• No two expanded systems are necessarily alike because owners selected their own cards and enclosure.
• Original TANBUG, TANEX and keyboard hardware are key to identifying a period configuration.

Specifications

Technical Information
Name	Tangerine Microtan 65
Manufacturer	Tangerine Computer Systems
Launched	Monday, January 1, 1979
Launch Price	£79.35 kit; £90.85 assembled
Country	United Kingdom
CPU	MOS Technology 6502 at 0.75 MHz
Units Sold
Operating System	TANBUG/XBUG monitor; optional Microsoft BASIC, assembler, TANDOS and TANFORTH
I/O	80-pin bus; optional serial, parallel, cassette and extensive I/O
Keyboard	20-key hexadecimal keypad or optional full ASCII keyboard
Storage	Cassette through TANEX; optional floppy disk controller
Sound	Software-controlled output; expansion sound options
Graphics	64 x 64 chunky graphics; optional 256 x 256 graphics board
Display	32 x 16 monochrome text
ROM	1KB TANBUG monitor; expansion ROM up to approximately 14KB
RAM	1KB standard; up to 48KB through Tangerine expansion
CPU Speed	0.75 MHz