Bootable fig-FORTH image

[Ronald McCollam]

I've recently been learning Forth as a fun bit of computing history.  For anyone who hasn't used Forth before, it's a very interesting language that presents a low-level view of the computer but as opposed to assembly it's not processor specific.  It's been a lot of fun for me to learn and I was surprised at how easy it was to get started!

I found a public domain image of a "bare metal" Forth implementation for the PDP-11 which works perfectly on the PiDP-11.  I'll include instructions here for anyone who wants to test it out, and I'm also happy to send a patch if it's of interest for the main PiDP-11 image.  (I'm just not sure where the source for that project lives; if someone has a pointer I'd be grateful.)

The image is here: http://www.stackosaurus.com/figforth.html

To set up on the PiDP-11, start with `sudo -s` to become root and then:

1. mkdir /opt/pidp11/systems/figforth && cd /opt/pidp11/systems/figforth
   
2. wget http://www.stackosaurus.com/figforth-1.3.3.1/rl02_figforth-1.3.3.1.dsk.gz
3. gzip -d rl02_figforth-1.3.3.1.dsk.gz
4. Create 'boot.ini' with contents:
   detach all
   reset all
   
   set cpu 11/70
   
   set rl0 rl01
   attach rl0 rl02_figforth-1.3.3.1.dsk
   
   ; connect to panel
   set realcons host=localhost
   set realcons panel=11/70
   ; We're running on a desktop PC with connection to localhost: max speed!
   set realcons interval=1
   set realcons connected
   ;set realcons debug
   ;show realcons
   
   echo
   echo
   
   echo FIG Forth from http://www.stackosaurus.com/figforth.html
   echo After booting, type:
   echo 1 load
   echo to load the rest of the FIG Forth system from disk.
   
   boot rl
   
5. cd ..
6. Add line to 'selections':
   4444 figforth
7. Restart the simh service (or just reboot)
   

Enjoy!

 - rm

[Mike Kostersitz]

Thanks for sharing :) Many good memories of using Forth on the PDP-11

Mike

[Claude Felizardo]

recently got my PiDP-11 working and was looking for forth and found your post.  Worked like a charm but it took my Pi-zero quite a while to load so I may need to try a Model 3 to see if it is any faster.  Thanks for the link and initial instructions!

On Sunday, November 29, 2020 at 6:54:15 AM UTC-8 mcco...@gmail.com wrote:

[Tony Nicholson]

There's a fig-FORTH port included with RSTS/E as a run-time system (the port was done by Paul Koning).

I wrote up a bit about using it under RSTS/E V10.1 on GitHub at

https://github.com/agn453/RSTS-E

Tony

[Claude Felizardo]

wow, I see that you have Dave Ahl's 101 basic games, advent, ZEMU as well as Forth.  Wow that brings back a lot of memories.  I wonder if I can find my original copies of the basic computer games. I will add this to my list of things to try out.  Thanks for the link!

Claude

[Adam Thornton]

One of the best things about the...I think it was the CDC-6600...at the LCM was that they had a pretty good selection of David Ahl BASIC games on it.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "[PiDP-11]" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pidp-11+u...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pidp-11/7a0c0523-0866-41f6-9b91-77293b9132aan%40googlegroups.com.