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Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU?

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  Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-21 14:53 -0700
    Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? foxaudioresearch@gmail.com - 2015-09-21 17:17 -0700
      Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2015-09-21 20:08 -1000
    Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2015-09-21 17:24 -0700
    Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-09-21 23:18 -0700
      Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? hughaguilar96@gmail.com - 2015-09-22 09:28 -0700
      Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2015-09-22 12:58 -0400
      Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-23 03:22 -0700
    Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? humptydumpty <ouatubi@gmail.com> - 2015-09-22 10:35 -0700
    Re: Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU? "HAA" <someone@microsoft.com> - 2015-09-23 18:54 +1000

#42106 — Good MS-DOS Forth for 80186 CPU?

I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.  
I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a 
few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on 
MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?

Many thanks.

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#42111

As a hobby I play with a version called Hsforth that is no longer in busines. It allowed multi segment programs without too much difficulty and was a fast ITC implementation.
 
I have used MPE power forth for Ms dos and it is very good. Not sure if it is free or not these. days.

poly forth used a memory expander and allowed multi users on PC but I have never used it.

Elizabeth would know if it's available.

You can tell I lean towards commercial versions. YMMV.


BF

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#42117

On 9/21/15 2:17 PM, foxaudioresearch@gmail.com wrote:
> As a hobby I play with a version called Hsforth that is no longer in busines. It allowed multi segment programs without too much difficulty and was a fast ITC implementation.
>
> I have used MPE power forth for Ms dos and it is very good. Not sure if it is free or not these. days.
>
> poly forth used a memory expander and allowed multi users on PC but I have never used it.

Actually, the "memory expander" version was short-lived. From the 
mid-1980's polyFORTH was a 32-bit system.

> Elizabeth would know if it's available.

Contact support@forth.com and ask. I am retired, an no longer current on 
pricing policies. I know they try not to support old technology, but 
perhaps an agreement not involving continuing support would be possible.

> You can tell I lean towards commercial versions. YMMV.

:-)

Cheers,
Elizabeth

-- 
==================================================
Elizabeth D. Rather   (US & Canada)   800-55-FORTH
FORTH Inc.                         +1 310.999.6784
5959 West Century Blvd. Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90045
http://www.forth.com

"Forth-based products and Services for real-time
applications since 1973."
==================================================

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#42112

Oregonian Haruspex <bob_davis_retired@yahoo.com> writes:
> I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.
> I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a
> few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth
> on MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?

That was before my time but I think F-PC was very fancy and popular.
You can download it from forth.org.

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#42118

On Monday, September 21, 2015 at 2:53:01 PM UTC-7, Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
> I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.  
> I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a 
> few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on 
> MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?
> 
> Many thanks.

Does MS-DOS run on the 80186?

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#42122

On Monday, September 21, 2015 at 11:18:06 PM UTC-7, hughag...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, September 21, 2015 at 2:53:01 PM UTC-7, Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
> > I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.  
> > I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a 
> > few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on 
> > MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?
> > 
> > Many thanks.
> 
> Does MS-DOS run on the 80186?

I was thinking of the Tandy-2000 when I asked this. I looked it up and found that MS-DOS does run on the 80186 --- the problem with the Tandy-2000 was that it had incompatible video hardware and all the MS-DOS programmers had been bypassing the OS and BIOS to work directly with the hardware.

Anyway, for 16-bit x86, F-PC is your best bet for an interactive Forth system. For a non-interactive Forth system that provides significantly better performance, go with Tom Almy's: http://www.almy.us/forthcmp.html
There is also TCOM that is non-interactive and generates fast .COM programs. TCOM is better than PolyForth because these are .COM programs and so you get program and data in a single 64K segment. Also, IIRC, the DS was adjusted so that it pointed to the bottom of the data that was in the top part of the .COM file, and memory was allocated above for the non-initialized data, so you actually got a full 64K for data even though it was a .COM file. By comparison, PolyForth had the program data, the program code, the compiler and the dictionary all in a single 64K segment --- this made PolyForth useless except for the very tiniest programs (also, PolyForth was very slow).

I remember finding a bug in F-PC (or maybe it was TCOM, or maybe both). The data-stack was not necessarily word-aligned. If it happened to be on an odd address, then the system slowed down a lot. I doubt that Tom Zimmer has ever fixed this. You can fix the problem though --- just modify the code that initializes the system to ensure that the data-stack pointer gets word aligned --- that is what I did.

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#42123

On 9/22/2015 2:18 AM, hughaguilar96@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, September 21, 2015 at 2:53:01 PM UTC-7, Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
>> I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.
>> I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a
>> few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on
>> MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?
>>
>> Many thanks.
>
> Does MS-DOS run on the 80186?

I thought the same thing.  When the '186 came out it had dedicated 
addresses used which were incompatible with the standard PC addresses. 
I guess they made a version of MS-DOS to be compatible.  It wouldn't be 
a bit issue to reassign addresses, except that a lot of programs talk to 
it directly rather than going through the OS or BIOS.

At least this is what I recall from 40 years ago.

-- 

Rick

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#42128

On 2015-09-22 06:18:03 +0000, hughaguilar96@gmail.com said:

> On Monday, September 21, 2015 at 2:53:01 PM UTC-7, Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
>> I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.
>> I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a
>> few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on
>> MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?
>> 
>> Many thanks.
> 
> Does MS-DOS run on the 80186?

The HP 200LX comes with MS-DOS 5.0 in ROM.  It works great, full EGA 
graphics support too albeit in greyscale.

It is compatible with many different DOS applications.  I have a C 
compiler that works well on it.

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#42124

marți, 22 septembrie 2015, 00:53:01 UTC+3, Oregonian Haruspex a scris:
> I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.  
> I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a 
> few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on 
> MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?
> 
> Many thanks.

Hi!

Also pygmyforth:   http://pygmy.utoh.org/pygmyforth.html
or eforth      :   http://www.forth.org/eforth.html

Have a nice day,
humptydumpty

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#42127

Oregonian Haruspex wrote:
> I have an HP 200LX palmtop PC that really needs a good Forth onboard.
> I have been looking at the forth.org site's list of Forths and quite a
> few MS-DOS implementations.  Does anybody have experience with Forth on
> MS-DOS?  What's the best one to use and why?
>
> Many thanks.

Freedos lists several you can try
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/forth/

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