About Oric

I've owned the same Oric-1 since 1983 (my first computer!) and thought it was well enough known.. but apparently not!

So for the unitiated, the Oric-1 was a low cost microcomputer designed and built in the UK as a competitor to the ZX Spectrum.

For more information please see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric

For the impatient (like me)!

If you want to get dflat running quickly:

• Go to the Oric/emulator folder
• oricutron.exe
• The emulator will start with Oric dflat as the default

In dflat, try a game

• Hit F1 on PC and press 'T'
• At the file dialog, navigate to software/dflat/games and select any .tap file
• type : tload "tetris.tap"
• Oric will load the program and start it automatically
• Turn off music by pressing left cursor!

Keys:

• Space starts the game
• Left and Right cursor moves left and right.
• Down cursor rapidly drops the shape
• Space rotates the shape clockwise
• On highscore table, Up/Down changes the initial, right moves to next, space is done.

Quick start for LOCI users

If you are lucky to have a LOCI device, please follow these instructions to get going quickly:

• copy the dfloci.rom file in Oric/dflat/rom to your SD card
• copy the dflat folder in Oric/software/ to the root of your SD card
• In LOCI, select the dfloci.rom file on your SD card and reboot
• Now in dflat if you type dir you will see folders in the dflat folder of your SD card
• Type tload "file" to load a file. If the file is directory then dflat changes to that directory
• Only files with extension .tap can be loaded with tload - these are dflat programs
• From the root, enter tload "games" to change to the games folder
• Now type tload "tetris.tap" to load the tetris game - the rest is as above.

Note: Wiki

A friend recommended that I should point out there is a fairly extensive wiki on dflat.

So after reading this, please have a look through the wiki to really get a feel for this language targeted at constrained 8-bit machinees.

https://github.com/6502Nerd/dflat/wiki

About dflat

dflat is a BASIC-like language for 8-bit micros and retro computers running on 6502 and 65c02. Key features & highlights;

• Procedure orientated structure (all runnable code within def..enddef blocks)
• Local variables - supports recursion
• Structured programming including if..elif..endif, while..wend, repeat..until
• Line numbers only used for sequencing lines, but cannot be referenced - no goto or gosub!
• Support for sound and graphics
• Inline assembler that can access dflat variables and vice-versa
• Fits in to 16KB ROM (including all low-level BIOS)
• Core language can be ported easily - just needs character put and get routines for input/output

Here is hello world in dflat:

• 10 def_hello()
• 20 println "Hello world!"
• 30 enddef
• _hello() [immediately invokes the procedure called _hello]

The base version here is targeted for the Oric-1 and Atmos computers from the early 80s and due to being integer only and tokenisation, is much faster than Oric BASIC.

I am in continual refinement and documentation mode as this is an on-going project for my personal enjoyment. Please see the wiki pages for details of the language.

The source and binaries are in the Oric folder - the readme.txt provides a guide to try dflat rather wihtout building it from scratch but also describes all folder/contents in this repo.