Date: 02-03-87(07:06)Number: 5364 (Deleted) To: ALL Refer#: NONE From: JOHN MUCHOW Read: (N/A) Subj: COCO FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Jerry, I just wanted to say hello, I'm very impressed with your board. a member of this board, Paul Gray, heard of my desire to try and implement FORTH on my Tandy CoCo2 and recommended the ECFB for information on software that might exist for it. I know almost nothing about Forth but I am very interested in using it as it seems ideal for implementation in a robotics environment. I'm anxious to begin poking around so I'll say goodbye. John Date: 02-10-87 (17:40) Number: 5436 To: JOHN MUCHOW Refer#: 5364 From: BOB HAWKINS Read: YES Subj: COCO FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE I have a commercial FORTH for my CoCo, Armadillo ColorForth (I think they've been out of business for a couple of years now). I don't use it much now that I have an Amiga, but if you want to talk about Forth on the CoCo, I'll be willing. I did hack around some with it, wrote my own screen editor and so on, and got to know a fair amount about the internals (though how much I remember is another story). Date: 02-16-87 (01:54) Number: 5481 To: BOB HAWKINS Refer#: 5436 From: JOHN MUCHOW Read: YES Subj: COCO FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE Bob, Thanks for your reply. So far I've gotten nowhere in my search for a Forth package for my CoCo2. I'll check around for that Armadillo ColorForth. What that Forth disc or cassette based? Not knowing a lot about Forth, I'm not sure what questions to ask. Were you happy with Armadillo's implementation? Is there a public domain Forth for the CoCo2 anywhere? Thanks for any help you can give. John Date: 02-16-87 (08:05) Number: 5485 To: JOHN MUCHOW Refer#: 5481 From: BOB HAWKINS Read: NO Subj: COCO FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE The Armadillo Forth was both disk and cassette based. The cassette version used a chunk of high memory (size and location user-adjustable) as ram disk, to simulate five to eight or so screens. You saved and loaded the ram disk by CSAVEM/CLOADM'ing that region of memory. If you have 64K, the whole upper 32K could be used as ram disk (but you can't CSAVEM it because the ROM has to switched in to do that; it's scratch memory). The disk version formats a disk for screens; basically, it puts a big direct-access file on the disk, where each record is one screen, 1024 bytes. The cassette "virtual screens" ram disk is also supported in the disk version, which is real nice; you can hack away on RAM screens, which is fast and doesn't screw up permanent disk screens, then transfer to disk when you get something worth saving. It is a fig-FORTH with minimal extensions for the CoCo, i.e. no interface to graphics or sound (sound is easy to add, not graphics). It works well, however. Spectrum projects used to advertise a Colorforth. I don't know if they still sell it. It was about $30.00. If you can't find anything, I'd be willing to sell you my package for, say, $10.00 (I'll include a bunch of programs, like my full-screen editor). I haven't used it since I got my Amiga. Let me know if you find a CoCo Forth still available, just to satisfy my curiousity. (PS. Armadillo does not have an assembler. It does support CODE words, but you have to comma in machine code, not assembly.) Date: 02-16-87 (08:28) Number: 5486 To: BOB HAWKINS Refer#: 5485 From: BOB HAWKINS Read: YES Subj: COCO FORTH Status: PUBLIC MESSAGE That got to be a long message. I just wanted to add that I don't think I have the cassette-only version any more. But the disk version has everything the cassette version does; it just takes up a few K more of your RAM.