Category: Retro
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RetroChallenge Writeup
Well, it’s the end of the 2024 RetroChallenge and here is the summary of my work. Sadly, I didn’t have the time to complete the goals, but I do have some lessons learned. Forth2012 Test Suite The Forth 2012 Test suite is quite extensive. I managed to get the “preliminary” tests and a substantial amount…
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BLKFILE
We’ve discussed the “text files as blocks” in a previous post. As a recap, we store a text file in consecutive 1024byte blocks, with character 13 (CR) as the End Of Line (EOL), and pad to the end of the block with character 26 as the End Of File (EOF). To implement this, I’ll add…
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Mass storage for the information age
Blocks The traditional Forth mass storage system is centred around the concept of BLOCKs. A BLOCK is traditionally a 1kilobyte chunk of storage. The design philosophy of CamelForth BootROM’s disk access is, like Forth itself, intentionally low-level. It views the entire disk as an array of blocks. Blocks are just data, they can be anything:…
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RetroChallenge – Forth-2012
Why Forth-2012? A: Because all the cool kids do it. Forth-2012 is the current standard for Forth? It defines the minimal wordset that most modern Forth implementations adhere to. By definition: A system that complies with all the system requirements given in sections 3 Usage requirements and 4.1 System documentation and their sub-sections is a Standard System. An otherwise…
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Day 1
I suppose it would be a good start to mention where I am with the CamelForth project. What is CamelForth? CamelForth is a Forth implementation for embedded microprocessors (8051, 8086, Z80, and 6809, with more to come). It is compatible with ANS Forth. It was originally developed as an educational project for The Computer Journal,…
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RetroChallenge 2024/10
Back in 2021, I entered the RetroChallenge (https://www.retrochallenge.org/) with my MillRACE project. This year, I’m back…. The RC2014 Mini II has a CamelForth port on its ROM. This entry aims to finally finish the upgraded version with disk support, Forth-2012 compliance, … and maybe add graphics support. I will be primarily debugging and documenting the…