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Forth Software and Hardware by Date

    1970 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 980 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 990 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 900 1 2 3 4
FORTH    mini-micro-poly-forth         *ANS-Forth-Work-*
                        Forth-79     cm-Forth 3/Forth-OK   colorforth
                                Forth-83  MachineForth            aha
                          FIG-Forth         e-Forth         4OS
                                         F*F          P21Forth

(Forth hardware)                    NOVIX             MuP21    F21
                                       RTX                    i21
                                          SHBOOM

The above list of Forth software and hardware is a subset of Forths that I have worked with here at UltraTechnology. If your Forth is not listed here it is not because I think that the above Forths are the only examples of Forth. Other Forth systems and other languages are not the focus of this site.

This site documents Forth related work at UltraTechnology from 1989 through 2003. This site contains essays about Forth and Forth style, specifications of various chips with Forth in hardware, code examples and tutorials for various versions of Forth. In particular this site provides information on the history of Forth as practiced by Charles Moore after he left Forth Inc. to focus on hardware development.


Forth Theory and Style

Thoughtful Programming, Forth Thoughtful Programming, Forth. Jeff Fox

1x Forth Chuck Moore 4/13/99

eForth and Zen (Chapter 1) Dr. C. H. Ting 1993, posted 1/31/99

Low Fat Computing Jeff Fox 12/6/98
Forth Methodology Jeff Fox 12/09/01
Essential Forth Short Essay on Forth, Jeff Fox 7/16/02
Levels of code in Forth programming a short essay inspired by Chuck Moore's recent chat comments. Jeff Fox 5/29/02
Chat Log with Chuck Moore 05/04/02
Essay on Forth Philosophy by Michael Misamore 01/23/02

Free Software Magazine Stack machine issue with article by Jeff Fox about my experience with Multiple Large stack Zero Operand Architecture Computers and the Forth Programming Language. Local copies in HTML and PDF formats are available at this site.






Benchmarks Essay by Jeff Fox on problems in understanding benchmarks. 03/31/03
C-Style Structures in Forth? Jeff Fox 10/27/02
Update to Ian Osgood's ANS Forth Chess program 9/18/02 FCP
Forth Robot Reference Page 12/09/01 MuP21h/F21d Forth Stamp 10/5/01
Ian Osgood releases his ANS Forth Chess program for win32forth. 10/4/01 Version 4 10/12/01
Forth - the LEGO of Programming Languages Jeff Fox 1995 Posted 11/24/00
Forth Meta Compilation J. Fox 8/21/97
Chuck Moore to SVFIG on 4/23/93. (posted 10/30/99)
Chuck Moore interview 6/6/93 (posted 11/27/99)
Chuck Moore's Fireside Chat 11/20/93 (posted 10/30/99)
Forth Meets Laws of Form 1994 J. Fox
F21 and F*F : F21 and Parallelizing Forth, J. Fox, Dr. M. Montvelishsky, FORML 1993
Parallel Forth - the new approach OCCAM and Forth-Linda, Dr. M. Montvelishsky, FD 1993
Forth-Linda Parallelizing Forth, J. Fox, FORML 1991
Distributed Shared Memory in Forth Parallel Forth, J. Fox, 1995


eForth

eForth was developed by Bill Muench and later used by Dr. C.H.Ting as a sort of FIG-Forth for the 90s. Dr. Ting has a simple model requiring only serial-I/O and an eForth kernel.

eForth Academy Taiwan Dr. C.H.Ting and associates create website with many copies of eForth, a Library of Manuals, a Lab, More on Forth Engines Vol 11 - 25, info on Novix NC4000, Harris RTX2000/2001/2010, ShBoom, MuP21, P8 and P24 designs, and PD Forth. 3/14/03


MachineForth

MachineForth was the native code for the third generation Forth computers designed by Charles Moore starting with his Sh-Boom design in 1988 and continued in his later Custom VLSI Forth Chips. MachineForth worked like traditional Forth, but with an updated virtual machine that more closely resembles the Forth hardware for the last fifteen years. Small instruction sets, multiple instructions may be packed into a memory word, fetch and store addressing exposed, no stack pointers, etc. The compiler packs native opcodes and macros and uses subroutine threading for defined words. A very small and simple form of Forth. The upd.ated virtual machine obsoletes many traditional Forth words.

MachineForth is the assembler enabled by the word CODE in P21Forth. P21Forth is a traditional Direct-Threaded ANS Forth implementation based on eForth for the Offete Enterprises Inc.'s MuP21. The OK OS is used in P21Forth. Important files and the html guide to OK version 1.01 is the source code to OK ver 1.01 for the MuP21. P21Forth User's Manual is available at this site.

MachineForth was the assembler enabled by the word CODE in the iTV Corporation's 4OS Operating System. Old links to the iTV Corporation updated to archives at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine 04/05/03

MachineForth has been used in other projects such as the Alegra Harware accelerated GUI, and the Aha OS, and compiler (initial versions). MachineForth is available as a native environment for the PC, and has been used by Dr. Ting as the assembler for various projects.

Free F21 Emulator/Machine Forth compiler/editor/debugger 11/4/98
Free F21 Simulator/MF c/e/d 9/98
S21 simulator for MuP21 bugfix, 21 bit AND 9/14/98

MachineForth is also the underlying model in colorforth, which adds the idea of pre-parsing tokenizing source to allow visual distiction in the editor, such as color, to clarify expression and simplify compilation.

colorforth

colorforth.com colorForth.com Chuck Moore's website

ColorForth was first developed by Mr. Moore in 1996 and was used primarily for scripting VLSI Chip testing in OKAD. OKAD ran in OK and the original colorforth ran in OKAD. In 2001 Mr. Moore wrote a stand-alone colorforth and used it as the host for his OKAD II software for use on the next generation of custum VLSI chips.

OKAD II Chuck rewrites OKAD in ColorForth 3/18/01

New colorForth releases: colorforth for Windows by Roman Pavlyuk
Xcolorforth for Linux (.tar.gz) by Mark Slicker. 4/05/03

Questions and Answers about the 25x chip report from 11/01 by Jeff Fox 12/13/01
DOS Color Forth released by Terry Loveall, 2/01/01
Enth and Flux (stand-alone ANS and Color Forth kits) released by Sean Pringle, 1/17/01
Converstations about ENTH and Flux Jeff Fox, Sean Pringle 12/7/00
Chuck Moore on Color Fireside Chat 1996 Charles Moore 11/16/96
Fireside Chat 1998 Charles Moore 11/30/98 (first 50 min)
Dispelling the User Illusion
Fireside Chat 1999
Fireside Chat 2000 Chuck Moore to SVFIG on 11/11/00 (html) in the online store.

Forth Day Jeff Fox to SVFIG 11/22/03 (posted 1/08/04)

New MachineForth, ColorForth and MISC mail lists 3/18/01
MachineForth, NOSC, colorforth Mail List Archives links 7/28/01


aha

Aha is a version of Forth that I wrote for the Fox chip the UltraTechnology F21. It is factored to support a small desktop environment and/or realtime embedded application hosting on F21. It take the ideas of color-tokens in the source and Forth as a database to the next logical level for the intended Forth chip target. It provides the AHA OS, AHA GUI, and AHA compiler in about 1K of memory. It has a very simple and very fast compiler that takes advantage of pre-parsed and pre-tokenized source. Source can be edited, or viewed as traditional Forth source, or as colorforth source. Programs are vectored to desktop icons using the same mechanism that programs use to assign functions to events.

A History of Forth and aha html transcript to video of Jeff Fox's presentation to SVFIG 12/16/00. posted 06/10/02
aha flowcharts and source 1/15/01
Introducing Aha Jeff Fox 11/29/00
aha Forth, Jeff Fox 11/29/00

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