6 Jun
2013
6 Jun
'13
1:51 p.m.
New scans have been posted at our document archive of the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing/InteractiveComput…
http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing/ForthInterestGroup
Each time I do a scan, the original document is either stored, if I
find it to be of value, given away, if someone else does, or recycled,
if no one appears to mind. This one rides the edge of the first two
categories, so if anyone would like the original, FFS, let me know.
There is no content to be gained by having the original vs. the scan,
yet someone may still want the tactile (and nasal!) experience of 33
year old paper. Shipping will be from the 60070 ZIP.
-jht
--
silent700.blogspot.com
Retrocomputing and collecting in the Chicago area:
http://chiclassiccomp.org
6 Jun
6 Jun
11:05 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:51 PM, Jason T <silent700 at gmail.com> wrote:
New scans have been posted at our document archive of
the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing/InteractiveComput…
http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing/ForthInterestGroup
The FORTH docs have been claimed. Thanks!
-j
11:39 p.m.
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Jason T <silent700 at gmail.com> wrote:
New scans have been posted at our document archive of
the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
Great work!
are you or is anyone tracking down the seminal FORTH implementations
and creating a repository for preservation?
7 Jun
7 Jun
11:18 a.m.
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 1:39 AM, Nigel Williams
<nigel.d.williams at gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Jason T <silent700
at gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks :) AFAIK this is the only FORTH doc I've got. I believe it
came from a recent eBay lot. At this point the pile/queue is so
large, I just grab the nearest easy-to-scan doc and plug away.
Someday I'll see daylight in the document lab again :)
j
New scans have been posted at our document
archive of the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
Great work!
are you or is anyone tracking down the seminal FORTH implementations
and creating a repository for preservation? 
11:33 a.m.
On 6/6/13 11:39 PM, Nigel Williams wrote:
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Jason T <silent700
at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not signing up for this, but CHM did just get a rather large donation of
FORTH docs and a couple of the LSI FORTH boxes, to go along with about three
boxes of docs that I bought at the last west coast VCF.
New scans have been posted at our document
archive of the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
Great work!
are you or is anyone tracking down the seminal FORTH implementations
and creating a repository for preservation?
noon
On Fri, Jun 07, 2013 at 11:33:55AM -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
On 6/6/13 11:39 PM, Nigel Williams wrote:
Oh gosh I remember keying in the 6502 FIGFORTH listing by hand on an
AIM65
- Diane
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Jason T
<silent700 at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not signing up for this, but CHM did just get a rather large donation of
FORTH docs and a couple of the LSI FORTH boxes, to go along with about three
boxes of docs that I bought at the last west coast VCF.
New scans have been posted at our document
archive of the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
Great work!
are you or is anyone tracking down the seminal FORTH implementations
and creating a repository for preservation?
10:01 p.m.
Hi Al
I'm curious as to which Forth Chips you have?
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Dwight
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 11:33:55 -0700
From: aek at bitsavers.org
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: FORTH fans rejoice
On 6/6/13 11:39 PM, Nigel Williams wrote:
On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Jason T
<silent700 at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not signing up for this, but CHM did just get a rather large donation of
FORTH docs and a couple of the LSI FORTH boxes, to go along with about three
boxes of docs that I bought at the last west coast VCF.
New scans have been posted at our document
archive of the Interactive
Computer Systems OmniFORTH manuals, as well as those for its
predecessor, fig-FORTH:
Great work!
are you or is anyone tracking down the seminal FORTH implementations
and creating a repository for preservation?
10:15 p.m.
New subject: [cctalk] RE: FORTH fans rejoice
On 06/08/2013 01:01 AM, dwight elvey wrote:
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy
controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Oh my, I drool uncontrollably.
I have a few Harris RTX-2001 chips, but haven't put 'em on a board yet.
I've never even SEEN one of the Novix chips.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
8 Jun
8 Jun
12:05 a.m.
New subject: [cctalk] RE: FORTH fans rejoice
On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 6:15 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2013 01:01 AM, dwight elvey wrote:
Wireless world over here had a reader offer and I got this little demo
Novix based board
http://www.collection.archivist.info/archive/DJCPD/PD/2007/2007_04_25_compu…
as you can see it is a Mostek made chip so its not obvious from the
outside what it is
what paper work I have is listed at
http://www.collection.archivist.info/searchv13.php?searchstr=novix
Dave Caroline
rapidly putting a glass cover over the items to avoid the dribble
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy
controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Oh my, I drool uncontrollably.
I have a few Harris RTX-2001 chips, but haven't put 'em on a board yet.
I've never even SEEN one of the Novix chips.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
4:53 p.m.
New subject: [cctalk] RE: FORTH fans rejoice
On 06/08/2013 03:05 AM, Dave Caroline wrote:
Wireless world over here had a reader offer and I got this little demo
Novix based board
http://www.collection.archivist.info/archive/DJCPD/PD/2007/2007_04_25_compu…
as you can see it is a Mostek made chip so its not obvious from the
outside what it is
what paper work I have is listed at
http://www.collection.archivist.info/searchv13.php?searchstr=novix
That is just way too cool. Those boards don't grown on trees. I hope
you're doing something cool with it, at least once in awhile! ;)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy
controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Oh my, I drool uncontrollably.
I have a few Harris RTX-2001 chips, but haven't put 'em on a board yet.
I've never even SEEN one of the Novix chips.
5:08 p.m.
New subject: [cctalk] RE: FORTH fans rejoice
On Jun 8, 2013, at 4:53 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2013 03:05 AM, Dave Caroline wrote:
Wireless world over here had a reader offer and I got this little demo
Novix based board
http://www.collection.archivist.info/archive/DJCPD/PD/2007/2007_04_25_compu…
as you can see it is a Mostek made chip so its not obvious from the
outside what it is
what paper work I have is listed at
http://www.collection.archivist.info/searchv13.php?searchstr=novix
That is just way too cool. Those boards don't grown on trees. I hope
you're doing something cool with it, at least once in awhile! ;)
I found this a while ago. I just think it's so cool to implement a Forth CPU
in 200 lines of Verilog. A complete system including a TCP/IP stack fits
in 8K bytes!
Here's the link: http://excamera.com/sphinx/fpga-j1.html
TTFN - Guy
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy
controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Oh my, I drool uncontrollably.
I have a few Harris RTX-2001 chips, but haven't put 'em on a board yet.
I've never even SEEN one of the Novix chips.
11 Jun
11 Jun
11:46 a.m.
New subject: [cctalk] RE: FORTH fans rejoice
On 06/08/2013 08:08 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
I found this a while ago. I just think it's so
cool to implement a Forth CPU
in 200 lines of Verilog. A complete system including a TCP/IP stack fits
in 8K bytes!
Here's the link: http://excamera.com/sphinx/fpga-j1.html
That's very cool indeed. I've gotta do something with that.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
12:11 p.m.
New subject: [cctalk] RE: FORTH fans rejoice
On Jun 11, 2013, at 11:46 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2013 08:08 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
What I find cool about it is that with a reasonably sized FPGA you can do
a fairly complex system (including all of the RAM) from within the FPGA.
TTFN - Guy
I found this a while ago. I just think it's
so cool to implement a Forth CPU
in 200 lines of Verilog. A complete system including a TCP/IP stack fits
in 8K bytes!
Here's the link: http://excamera.com/sphinx/fpga-j1.html
That's very cool indeed. I've gotta do something with that. 
7 Jun
7 Jun
10:17 p.m.
On 6/7/2013 11:01 PM, dwight elvey wrote:
Hi Al
I'm curious as to which Forth Chips you have?
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Dwight
I favor threaded code myself and external memory stacks.
I rejoice over fig-forth, nothing newer. Ben.
8 Jun
8 Jun
6:37 a.m.
The NC4000 was fun to play with, still. I recall
comparing my 4MHz processor to Intels 80386 at 33mHz.
I wrote some optimized code to sort 1000 integers. The
NX4000 ran in about 19 millisconds.
I don't recall exactly what the 386 did but it was 2 or 3 times
slower.
I'd added one specialized hardware/code to my boards. I made
it so that if I wrote to 0FFFF and read it, it would swap the high
and low order 8 bits. It was relatively efficient because -1 was
a short constant instead of a full address.
I needed the 8 bits for my drivers for the floppy and hard drive.
I'd also add a couple parts so that on boot, I could load the core
to shadow RAM and then switch to full RAM. That allowed me to
do patching while experimenting with new core code. I'll trying to
recall the manufacture of the processor board( it is in storage ).
The other fun thing was that it could recompile the ROM image
from the hard disk in less than 15 seconds.
The
4000 had an interesting tradeoff in power to speed.
The ALU would calculate everything on each cycle and then
you'd pick the answer through a mux. This allowed things like
add or subtract to start working before the opcode was even
fetched, for the add or subtract. Long carries still consumed
more than two cycles on faster clock speeds. One threw a NOP
infront of the + instruction to allow it to complete.
It didn't make sense to me until John Ribble explained it to me.
Dwight
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 23:17:03 -0600
From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: FORTH fans rejoice
On 6/7/2013 11:01 PM, dwight elvey wrote:
Hi Al
I'm curious as to which Forth Chips you have?
I have a NC4000 system that I added a XT floppy controller
and an XT hard disk controller, years ago. I even used an
old 5 meg seagate drive.
Dwight
I favor threaded code myself and external memory stacks.
I rejoice over fig-forth, nothing newer. Ben.
8 a.m.
On 6/8/2013 7:37 AM, dwight elvey wrote:
The NC4000 was fun to play with, still. I recall
comparing my 4MHz processor to Intels 80386 at 33mHz.
I wrote some optimized code to sort 1000 integers. The
NX4000 ran in about 19 millisconds.
I don't recall exactly what the 386 did but it was 2 or 3 times
slower.
I'd added one specialized hardware/code to my boards. I made
it so that if I wrote to 0FFFF and read it, it would swap the high
and low order 8 bits. It was relatively efficient because -1 was
a short constant instead of a full address.
I needed the 8 bits for my drivers for the floppy and hard drive.
I'd also add a couple parts so that on boot, I could load the core
to shadow RAM and then switch to full RAM. That allowed me to
do patching while experimenting with new core code. I'll trying to
recall the manufacture of the processor board( it is in storage ).
The other fun thing was that it could recompile the ROM image
from the hard disk in less than 15 seconds.
The 4000 had an interesting tradeoff in power to speed.
The ALU would calculate everything on each cycle and then
you'd pick the answer through a mux. This allowed things like
add or subtract to start working before the opcode was even
fetched, for the add or subtract. Long carries still consumed
more than two cycles on faster clock speeds. One threw a NOP
infront of the + instruction to allow it to complete.
It didn't make sense to me until John Ribble explained it to me.
Dwight
But the question, does Forth need to super fast?
Oh well, back to C programing, other than lisp,APL,Forth
that covers 90% of the high level langauges I can think of.
Most every thing else is written in C.
Ben.
9:48 a.m.
New subject: [cctalk] Re: FORTH fans rejoice
On 06/08/2013 11:00 AM, ben wrote:
That all depends on the application requirements, not the chosen
implementation language.
That said, though, Forth is, very generally, almost always very fast.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
The NC4000 was
fun to play with, still. I recall
comparing my 4MHz processor to Intels 80386 at 33mHz.
I wrote some optimized code to sort 1000 integers. The
NX4000 ran in about 19 millisconds.
I don't recall exactly what the 386 did but it was 2 or 3 times
slower.
I'd added one specialized hardware/code to my boards. I made
it so that if I wrote to 0FFFF and read it, it would swap the high
and low order 8 bits. It was relatively efficient because -1 was
a short constant instead of a full address.
I needed the 8 bits for my drivers for the floppy and hard drive.
I'd also add a couple parts so that on boot, I could load the core
to shadow RAM and then switch to full RAM. That allowed me to
do patching while experimenting with new core code. I'll trying to
recall the manufacture of the processor board( it is in storage ).
The other fun thing was that it could recompile the ROM image
from the hard disk in less than 15 seconds.
The 4000 had an interesting tradeoff in power to speed.
The ALU would calculate everything on each cycle and then
you'd pick the answer through a mux. This allowed things like
add or subtract to start working before the opcode was even
fetched, for the add or subtract. Long carries still consumed
more than two cycles on faster clock speeds. One threw a NOP
infront of the + instruction to allow it to complete.
It didn't make sense to me until John Ribble explained it to me.
Dwight
But the question, does Forth need to super fast?
12:58 p.m.
New subject: [cctalk] Re: FORTH fans rejoice
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2013 12:48:54 -0400
From: mcguire at neurotica.com
To:
Subject: Re: [cctalk] Re: FORTH fans rejoice
On 06/08/2013 11:00 AM, ben wrote:
That all depends on the application requirements, not the chosen
implementation language.
That said, though, Forth is, very generally, almost always very fast.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
One can alway write optimized C that will be faster
than code written in Forth. Still, many Forth programs
run faster than a similar large C program.
It isn't that Forth is really faster, usually it isn't because
it is usually a compute engine described on some other machines
native code. Most C code is optimized to relatively clean
native level code.
So, you ask why in a large application, Forth often beats
C?
The answer is simple. In Forth, one tends to write better thought out
and better quality code. In Forth you write with words to make
descriptive sentences. The language is not always between you
and your application. Forth is formed into your application.
It is not English or French. It is just a way
of describing to the computer what it is you want it to do.
When one gets used to doing this, one finds it is easier to write
quality, correct code.
There are a lot of things people don't like about most Forths.
It usually does no type checking ( rarely actually needed and
rarely keeps you from making serious mistakes ).
It has a lot of irritating stack words and most temporary variables
are not named ( well written Forth makes minimal use of stack
words, except at the lowest levels ).
Most free Forths did not include floating point ( rarely correct
for most applications but simpler to use ).
Dwight
The
NC4000 was fun to play with, still. I recall
comparing my 4MHz processor to Intels 80386 at 33mHz.
I wrote some optimized code to sort 1000 integers. The
NX4000 ran in about 19 millisconds.
I don't recall exactly what the 386 did but it was 2 or 3 times
slower.
I'd added one specialized hardware/code to my boards. I made
it so that if I wrote to 0FFFF and read it, it would swap the high
and low order 8 bits. It was relatively efficient because -1 was
a short constant instead of a full address.
I needed the 8 bits for my drivers for the floppy and hard drive.
I'd also add a couple parts so that on boot, I could load the core
to shadow RAM and then switch to full RAM. That allowed me to
do patching while experimenting with new core code. I'll trying to
recall the manufacture of the processor board( it is in storage ).
The other fun thing was that it could recompile the ROM image
from the hard disk in less than 15 seconds.
The 4000 had an interesting tradeoff in power to speed.
The ALU would calculate everything on each cycle and then
you'd pick the answer through a mux. This allowed things like
add or subtract to start working before the opcode was even
fetched, for the add or subtract. Long carries still consumed
more than two cycles on faster clock speeds. One threw a NOP
infront of the + instruction to allow it to complete.
It didn't make sense to me until John Ribble explained it to me.
Dwight
But the question, does Forth need to super fast? 
5:06 p.m.
On 09/06/2013, at 1:00 AM, ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote:
Oh well, back to C programing, other than lisp,APL,Forth
that covers 90% of the high level langauges I can think of.
Most every thing else is written in C.
In my world about one quarter of our applications are in c but the rest is COBOL and
we're talking 20+ million lines of code. I'm pretty confident that there's no
FORTH although I'm sure there's one or two implementations for OpenVMS :-)
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"
7 Jun
7 Jun
1:02 a.m.
Also recently surfaced: The original metacompiled fig Forth model by
Bill Ragsdale. I.e. not one of the more commonly found assembly
listings.
http://www.forth.org/fig-forth/fig-forth-model.pdf
"The FIG Forth Model was derived from Ragsdale's 6502 system. In order
to simplify publication and rapid implementation across a wide variety
of architectures, a translator was written to convert Forth
metacompiler source code into text that, when input to a standard 6502
assembler, would replicate the original kernel image."
http://www.forth.com/resources/evolution/evolve_3.html
4212
days inactive
4217
days old
20 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com -
db＠db.net -
dkelvey＠hotmail.com -
ggs＠shiresoft.com -
huw.davies＠mail.vsm.com.au -
lars＠nocrew.org -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
nigel.d.williams＠gmail.com -
silent700＠gmail.com