From: "Eric Flanzbaum" <elf at
ucsd.edu>
---snip---
Given what others have posted in this thread about the
Cat, I'm under the
impression it is basically a editing machine (with some fancy features
built-in), along with a back door into Forth. Almost a glorified word
processor, if you will.
Was there much (if any) 3rd party software developed for it -- which
expanded beyond its native capabilities?
Hi
Not that I know of but there are others that might
have more information on this. From my playing with
it, you can not directly execute code from the disk.
Even to run Forth, you have to select the code from
the screen before it will execute. This isn't hard
to do but not the same as running a program on the
disk.
There might have been some way to do it but the
Cat only seems to use the disk for text storage.
Once in Forth, I believe one can take over the machine
and treat it like a normal processor. I'm sure
there must be a trap-door in there someplace to
load code from disk but I've not explored what
can be done from Forth, other than, when I first
got it, to look through the memory to determine where
the ROM images were.
I do know one of the fellows that wrote code for
it and I've been meaning to pick his brain some
time. For the curious, it is a great machine. There
is so much in there to explore. and even a way
to do it ( Forth is like a super monitor ).
Dwight