I appreciate all the replies...
Dwight: I agree with ziloo... please... elaborate.
Hi
Without a boot disk, you'll need to do a little more work. Bootstrapping such a machine,
to CP/M, is a little difficult but can be done. Analyzing the ROMs on board will give
one a starting place. Once you can do a first load from disk and write back to disk,
one can install CP/M without too much difficulty. I realize it seems like a massive
project but I've done it on a machine with nothing more than schematics. You most
likely have enough code in the ROMs to get the disk going. I didn't even have that.
As for using Forth. I put some notes together with my thoughts:
Why Forth?
1. Most small Forths are actually small
enough that, within a couple weeks, one can
fully understand how they work. Could you
say that about your C compiler?
2. Small Forths like EFORTH only need 32
code words to be implemented on any particular
machine ( Already done for 8080/8085/Z80 ).
3. Forth can run on the target machine with
minimum resources. Most can run on an 8080
machine with about 6-7K for the Forth engine
and about 1K of additional RAM.
4. Tethered Forth can run with as few as a
100 bytes or so.
5. Forth is both interactive and compiling,
at the same time. Test code can be quickly
entered and run. Incremental write, test
and debug is very fast at getting to
working code.
6. Forth is modular with no boiler plate need,
like most other modular languages.
7. Forth uses a simple input interpreter that
doesn't have any ambiguity in what is typed
in. ( What you see is what you get )
8. Forth enables one to quickly write/modify
the language itself to become the problem
set ( there is no distinction between the
Forth interpreter/compiler and the code you
just wrote, unless you want it to ).
9. Execution is left to right, top
to bottom. This makes debugging easier.
10. It is like having a monitor on steroids.
Why Not Forth?
1. No type checking!
2. RPN is not to familiar to most!
3. You maintain stacks or you crash!
4. You don't get it!
