Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup

From	Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup
Date	2017-03-26 13:56 -0500
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<ob92mu$ohv$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<ob14p7$vvp$1@dont-email.me>

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On 3/23/2017 1:42 PM, rickman wrote:
> I recall a couple of years ago I worked with Mecrisp Forth on a TI ARM
> launchpad.  The hardest part was just getting the durn thing installed
> and all the support on the PC working.  Now I want to use an MSP430
> target (it has a built in display) and I am having exactly the same sort
> of problems.
>
> Aside from the issues of TI having somewhat fragmented documentation (or
> maybe I just can't follow instructions in my dotage) I never got the USB
> driver installed under Windows 8 (or was that on my Vista machine?)  To
> make it work back then I ended up using a raspberry pi as a remote
> target interface.  It worked, I got the work done and all was well.  But
> it left a bad taste in my mouth, mostly from the problems getting the TI
> tools to let me burn the Mecrisp image to the target but also the lack
> of documentation surrounding Mecrisp.
>
> This time it is like a trip down déjà vu lane (although it is more like
> déjà vécu, having lived through it before).  I don't know if I will have
> problems installing the emulator driver because I can't download it. The
> TI site has a form you must fill out to assure you are not going to ship
> the tool to an export controlled country.  I do that and click all the
> buttons on the next two pages, but a download never happens.  I've tried
> two browsers so I'm pretty sure it is the TI site.
>
> I finally found a TI web page that supports flashing the board and even
> flashed the flash tool!  So I can install Mecrisp now, but I still need
> to figure out what I need to do to talk to it.  That at least is pretty
> well documented in the readme file.  It looks like the command line is
> connected to the serial port that goes through the emulator interface.  :)
>

I will tomorrow start looking at the documentation on how to install the 
software and give it a go, so far noForth is pretty good compared to 
several other Forth I tried, but meCrisp, and VFX have not been tried 
and compared.

The comparison weights in many factors such as supported processors, 
efficiency on how fast it runs and how much resources it takes, how 
useful is it's Forth implementation, source code availability.

No doubt MPE VFX Forth will do well as it can be embedded or it can be 
tethered to save space, and in tethered mode there is a very nice 
optimizer built in. The main disadvantage it has an it is an annoying 
one is that it setup for Flash processors only and there is no sample of 
it supporting the FRAM parts which are the main parts I'm interested in, 
so there would be some major work to modify it to work with FRAM parts. 
It will do well in several aspects, efficiency as it's an optimizing 
compiler and available in tethered form so only needed works are used, 
and it has extensive functions, both words available and use of 
resources such as i2c, spi, SD cards, etc.

The whole purpose of the exercise is to make some projects available to 
others use so I want to pick the right software so others can easily 
follow. For that reason I will test the free version of MPE instead of 
the Professional Version.

-- 
Cecil - k5nwa

Thread

Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-23 14:42 -0400
  Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-23 15:37 -0400
  Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-23 22:37 -0400
    Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Matthias Koch <matthias.koch@hot.uni-hannover.de> - 2017-03-27 15:27 +0200
      Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-27 10:56 -0400
  Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-25 16:24 -0400
    Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-25 15:33 -0500
      Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-25 17:23 -0400
        Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-25 17:32 -0500
          Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-26 03:09 -0400
            Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2017-03-26 02:50 -0700
              Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-26 07:56 -0400
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2017-03-26 11:04 -0700
              Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-26 13:24 -0500
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-26 14:45 -0400
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-26 14:16 -0500
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-26 14:53 -0500
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Mark Wills <markwills1970@gmail.com> - 2017-03-27 02:16 -0700
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-29 12:51 -0400
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-29 12:56 -0400
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-29 12:24 -0500
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-29 12:32 -0500
                Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-29 14:15 -0400
            Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-26 13:44 -0500
    Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2017-03-25 14:42 -0700
      Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup john <anon@example.com> - 2017-05-03 11:30 +0100
  Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-26 13:56 -0500
    Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-31 16:29 -0400
      Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup Cecil Bayona <cbayona@cbayona.com> - 2017-03-31 16:49 -0500
        Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-31 18:16 -0400
  Re: Mecrisp Forth Startup rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2017-03-29 13:19 -0400

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