Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.forth > #51398

Re: blocks and overlays question

Show key headers only | View raw

albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) writes:
> There is hardly a tradition of overlays. 

Oh I didn't realize that.  I know that they were used at least
sometimes.  But I guess you're saying you'd normally load some blocks
and have them stay resident "forever".  I guess that's reasonable.

> This is the MSDOS era.  1. There was about 300K blocks utilities (with
> 70K free an the floppy) and 230 K for the metacompilation system.

OK, thanks.  I see f83.com is just 25k or so, but I wondered about the
utilities.  Was it around the same in CP/M?

> There are lots of small Forth's to take as an example
> CamelForth, noforth etc.
> No need to go back to the pre-ANSI F83.

Oh, I didn't realize these had blocks and utilities.  I'll take a look.

> You also could have a look at my Renesas ciforth, with a similar
> ram/flash configuration. The flash above 64k is used as a library of
> blocks.

This sounds good too.  I remember playing with the 4th block editor but
the general environment was rather different from traditional Forth.

I just ran F83 under dosemu on Linux and it worked nicely, but I didn't
try any of the blocks stuff.

My idea (more a thought experiment than an intention to do anything
real) is to have a gadget with an embedded MCU, but put a Forth
interpreter in it for the purpose of allowing the user to set parameters
and customize some things.  And that leads to the desire to put in the
complete code for the device, as blocks and screens, with a block editor
etc., making it totally hackable with no external tools except a
terminal.  So I wondered if 20k ram and 64k flash was enough for that
idea to be sound, assuming it's ok for the system and utilities to use
up to half of the flash and ram.  

The specific Cortex M3 cpu on that board appears to be very cheap (less
than an Atmega328 or the like).  There's another version that's the same
except for having 128k flash, that costs several times more, though
still not much in the scheme of things.

Back to comp.lang.forth | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

blocks and overlays question Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-27 11:22 -0700
  Re: blocks and overlays question albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2016-09-27 20:51 +0200
    Re: blocks and overlays question Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-27 12:36 -0700
      Re: blocks and overlays question "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-09-27 10:16 -1000
        Re: blocks and overlays question Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-27 13:41 -0700
          Re: blocks and overlays question "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-09-27 11:36 -1000
            Re: blocks and overlays question Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-27 15:36 -0700
              Re: blocks and overlays question "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2016-09-27 13:33 -1000
                Re: blocks and overlays question Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-27 16:54 -0700
          Re: blocks and overlays question albert@cherry.spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2016-09-28 09:44 +0200
  Re: blocks and overlays question hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2016-09-27 12:22 -0700
  Re: blocks and overlays question foxaudioresearch@gmail.com - 2016-09-27 12:51 -0700
    Re: blocks and overlays question Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-27 13:25 -0700
    Re: blocks and overlays question Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2016-09-28 03:37 -0700
      Re: blocks and overlays question foxaudioresearch@gmail.com - 2016-09-28 07:41 -0700
        Re: blocks and overlays question Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2016-09-28 15:05 -0700

csiph-web