Announcing Mecrisp-Stellaris 2.5.6 running on Raspberry Pico with RP2040

[Matthias Koch]

Dear Forthers,

I am happy to announce that with the assistance of
Jan Bramkamp, Robert Clausecker and Terry Porter,
freshly released Mecrisp-Stellaris 2.5.6 now runs
on Raspberry Pico with RP2040.

Matthias
mecrisp.sourceforge.net

[none albert]

In article <s13ebl$s6b$1...@dont-email.me>, Matthias Koch <m.c...@gmx.net> wrote:
>Dear Forthers,
>
>I am happy to announce that with the assistance of
>Jan Bramkamp, Robert Clausecker and Terry Porter,
>freshly released Mecrisp-Stellaris 2.5.6 now runs
>on Raspberry Pico with RP2040.

Nice work! I'm busy with Pico too. Got its green led blinking, so
the development kit works.

>
>Matthias
>mecrisp.sourceforge.net

Groetjes Albert
--
"in our communism country Viet Nam, people are forced to be
alive and in the western country like US, people are free to
die from Covid 19 lol" duc ha
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

[Paul Rubin]

Matthias Koch <m.c...@gmx.net> writes:
> I am happy to announce that with the assistance of Jan Bramkamp,
> Robert Clausecker and Terry Porter, freshly released Mecrisp-Stellaris
> 2.5.6 now runs on Raspberry Pico with RP2040.

This is cool: are you going to support the Pico's boot system and file
system? It would be awesome to have a boot image similar to the
MicroPython one, so you can just copy it to the Pico board, and
immediately have a Forth system that you can copy Forth files to.

[Matthias Koch]

> Nice work! I'm busy with Pico too. Got its green led blinking, so
> the development kit works.

Thank you, Albert !

Surely you can find good use for the initialisation code.

[Matthias Koch]

Its already an image to drop into in order to install Forth,
but then you need to connect your USB-serial adapter cable
for terminal. Maybe someone out there writes an USB driver ?

[Rick C]

So this is a bare metal Forth and not an executable file using the existing boot image?

[none albert]

For the MSP430 I have a flasher and clock speed calibrator that works
directly on the io ports, no USB.
I also have an IDE like system that communicates over USB.
I do not find a difference with any other serial communication
sych as RS232.

[Matthias Koch]

> So this is a bare metal Forth and not an executable file using the existing boot image?

It is a bare metal Forth, it calls into the BOOTROM for flash access only,
and is completely independent otherwise.

Note that BOOTROM does neither contain an USB CDC implementation for terminal
nor a complete file system.

[none albert]

In article <92892726-e5eb-48a8...@googlegroups.com>,

This is how the Pico rolls.
What you do is generate an executable file (usf) by the sdk in a
special format. Now the Pico presents itself as a flash drive.
Copy the executable into the drive and it runs.
So it is at the same time a bare metal Forth and an executable.

I have written some programs to flash sbc (MSP430, an elektor
board, the 16 bit renesas). It is not too hard but the protocol
has to be precisely known. I can't see an advantage in foregoing
the facilities present.

[Rick C]

So this is a bit like programming for the PC under DOS except you don't even have a BIOS to call for I/O other than the Flash access. Ok...

--

Rick C.

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[Paul Rubin]

I wonder if it's feasible to port some of the existing code (whatever
they use in their Micropython image) into Mecrisp, to handle the USB
stuff. I'm presuming those parts are written in C, but they wouldn't
have to be that closely integrated with Mecrisp Forth.

What kind of workflow do you use to write a Forth program over a serial
port? Just send the whole source file over the port, etc.?

Does Mecrisp support a FAT file system on the Pico flash drive, or is it
more of a BLOCKS-like interface? I guess both are ok.