Hello from UK! and presenting dflat system

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6502Nerd
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dflat update

Post by 6502Nerd »

Thank you coco.oric for the welcome. I have had lots of problems with getting tape save/load to work, and traced it by chance to the way my breadboard was configured (very random issues, I will put on hardware section). But I persevered and have got closer to finishing the port from my 65c02 homebrew computer (which runs at 5.36Mhz) to the Oric (of course it is 6502A at 1Mhz).

I tried some old PCW magazine benchmarks from the 80s (see this link: http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/BASIC_Benchmark

dflat compares well considering it is running on a 1Mhz machine. One big advantage is that dflat is an integer BASIC only. Still ok for many applications including games I think. Most functions are in place including sound and graphics commands, plus I managed to retain the in-line assembler too. This was important to me as I really like that BBC BASIC had this feature - albeit in a much bigger ROM (32K).

I still have some optimisation to do and hopefully free up a few more bytes to add one or two commands I could not port due to space.

I tweeted about it here, with a short video : https://twitter.com/6502nerd/status/131 ... 11586?s=20

Happy to provide more information on essentials like syntax etc. but in the meantime I am creating some basic user docs and also tidying up ready to put GitHub :D
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6502Nerd
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dflat update

Post by 6502Nerd »

Hello all

I thought I would share with you a tweet I made this evening which shows a little skit I made using dflat on Oric:
https://twitter.com/6502nerd/status/132 ... 82913?s=20

I think I have managed to fix the tape loading issue - now I can create programs on a real Oric and save them as WAV, which load fine on Oricutron running in Windows 10. Also can create programs using the emu and save as ORT files.

I also have started a hackaday page about this project;
https://hackaday.io/project/175585-oric-1-dflat-system

To remind, this is a complete new ROM which replaces the Oric ROM:
  • I wrote all the low level from scratch (sound, graphics, tape, keyboard)
  • The language includes an inline assembler
  • Some graphics, sound and high resolution commands are provided
  • Runs faster than Oric BASIC even accounting for this being an integer BASIC
I have a list of things to sort out including some small issues that I only noticed late today. When fixed, I think this could be a good language for beginners to use a more structured approach to BASIC (as dflat does not have GOTO or GOSUB!), and more advanced programmers can switch to assembler quite easily. So should be possible to build some fun applications with this. I will definitely build a few more once I iron out my list.
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ibisum
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Re: Hello from UK! and presenting dflat system

Post by ibisum »

I can already see one thing I like about it a lot .. lower case! :)
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Chema
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Re: Hello from UK! and presenting dflat system

Post by Chema »

Great! This is a really nice project!
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6502Nerd
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Re: Hello from UK! and presenting dflat system

Post by 6502Nerd »

ibisum wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 10:07 am I can already see one thing I like about it a lot .. lower case! :)
Ha - yes, I much prefer code in lower case, seems more readable! :-)
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6502Nerd
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Re: Hello from UK! and presenting dflat system

Post by 6502Nerd »

Chema wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 3:32 pm Great! This is a really nice project!
Thank you for your kind words! I am going to tune and iron a little more then make some programming examples to help with understanding how dflat can be used :-)
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