31 replies to this topic

[Lee Stewart]

All...

I have a first draft (attached) of my updated version of the (now finished---see later or click link-->) TI Forth Instruction Manual in PDF format. I am working on it in Open Office Writer (ODT format), but it won't look right if someone reading it does not have the fonts I used. I think the PDF will work better. I have elaborated parts of the manual, but I have not started an index, yet. One problem with the indexing in OOO Writer is that I have not yet figured out how to sort the index by ASCII codes. Writer wants to put non-alphabetics at the end and I want them as the TI FORTH Glossary has them, i.e., in ASCII order. Anyway, I am very interested in any feedback on this draft, particularly where I have added or changed information and whether you think an index would be useful.

...lee

Edited by Lee Stewart, Sat May 19, 2012 11:01 AM.

[Lee Stewart]

I will try to upload the file again...

...lee

PS: See finished TI Forth Instruction Manual later in this thread.

Edited by Lee Stewart, Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:35 AM.

[sometimes99er]

Looks very cool. I'm only learning Forth, but the TI relevance will be an added bonus when reading. Thanks.

[Willsy]

Excellent job! Well done!

[retroclouds]

I am not much of a forth guy, but this is an Impressive manual. One thing I remember from TI-FORTH that I found mighty cool, is the 64 columns editor. Think this was done in a half-bitmap mode. Is the source code to TI-FORTH available somewhere? Would like to take a peek.

[Lee Stewart]

You can get the source disks at ftp://ftp.whtech.com/user%20groups/Cedar%20Valley/library/ and the disks are CV182.DSK and CV183.DSK.

Those disks above are the TMS9900 Assembler source code for the TI FORTH kernel. All the words in the "TI FORTH Glossary" (Appendix D of the manual) marked "RESIDENT" are also coded in Assembler. The TI FORTH system screens are on the TI FORTH system disk and it can be retrieved from the above source as CV019.DSK. The FORTH source is located in the "file" SYS-SCRNS, but you will need an operating TI FORTH system to make sense of them. The FORTH source is also Appendix I of the manual I posted. The 64-column editor is defined on screens 22-29.

...lee

retroclouds, on Tue Aug 2, 2011 9:50 AM, said:

I am not much of a forth guy, but this is an Impressive manual. One thing I remember from TI-FORTH that I found mighty cool, is the 64 columns editor. Think this was done in a half-bitmap mode. Is the source code to TI-FORTH available somewhere? Would like to take a peek.

Edited by Lee Stewart, Tue Aug 2, 2011 10:27 PM.

[sometimes99er]

retroclouds, on Tue Aug 2, 2011 9:50 AM, said:

One thing I remember from TI-FORTH that I found mighty cool, is the 64 columns editor. Think this was done in a half-bitmap mode.

At one time I was looking into doing a 64 column demo, but any font (ASCII characters) would have strange versions of H, N, M and W to name a few and/or lower and upper case mixed to make them distinct. Instead I settled for a proportional font thing, which is still just sitting in a bucket of ideas. I had no doubt about using bitmap mode, half-bitmap would stand a good chance of running out of characters, also for 64 columns, even if there's clever reuse and a good deal of spaces.

[OLD CS1]

sometimes99er, on Tue Aug 2, 2011 11:04 AM, said:

At one time I was looking into doing a 64 column demo, but any font (ASCII characters) would have strange versions of H, N, M and W to name a few and/or lower and upper case mixed to make them distinct.

Several programs for the Commodore 64 divided the 25x40 screen into 25x80 by dividing 8x8 character blocks into 4x8 blocks, and the font was something like 3x7 instead of 5x7. Nick Rossi did this with Novaterm 9.x, and it worked pretty well. Off the top of my head I do not recall what those letters looked like, but they were discernible none the less. I cannot imagine it would look too terrible on the 4A.

[sometimes99er]

OLD CS1, on Tue Aug 2, 2011 9:48 PM, said:

Several programs for the Commodore 64 divided the 25x40 screen into 25x80 by dividing 8x8 character blocks into 4x8 blocks, and the font was something like 3x7 instead of 5x7.

Yeah, I shouldn't have moved on so quickly. These seems fine ...



ref.: http://www.fontspace.../splintered/3x7

[Tursi]

Hehe, yep, there you go!

I wanted to post the 80 column demo I did years and years ago, but although I thought I transferred it to the PC, I can't find it now. It used a similar 3 pixel wide font but ran the characters together -- and even that is generally readable. (Jeff Brown developed this concept into Term80, and got pretty good display speed out of it, too!)

The biggest thing I did differently was to draw the N with a tall stripe (5 pixels) down the center column, I think it looked better than the rounded one in that font. Otherwise I like they way that one rounds off some of the characters.

[Lee Stewart]

Attached is the second draft of the augmented (now finished---see later or click link-->) TI Forth Instruction Manual. I have added two appendices: "Appendix K Diskette Format Details" and "Appendix L TI FORTH System for Larger Disks". I am almost done. I have not yet tested the words I wrote for Appendix L, but will do that in the next week or so. I still have not decided whether to add an index because doing that can be a lot of hard work and the "Table of Contents" is pretty detailed already. Please feel free to contact me with corrections, suggestions for additions or suggestions of better ways to present the material.

...lee

PS: See final edition (TI Forth Instruction Manual) later in this thread.

Edited by Lee Stewart, Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:42 AM.

[Lee Stewart]

Oops! I found one error already! As I was typing the words FORTHSYS and FORTHWRK from Appendix L sections L.1 anf L.2, I saw that I had neglected to subtract 2 when ALLOTing additional space for LESBUF. Oh, well.

...lee

[retroclouds]

Your work is much appreciated. It's a joy browsing the PDF on my ipad.

[OLD CS1]

retroclouds, on Mon Sep 5, 2011 2:06 PM, said:

Your work is much appreciated. It's a joy browsing the PDF on my ipad.

Seconded, but on my Touchpad

[Lee Stewart]

Thanks for the kind words.

I have tested the new DTEST, FORTH-COPY, DSK-HD (substitute for DISK-HEAD) and FMT-DSK (substitute for FORMAT-DISK). DTEST and FORTH-COPY work fine. DSK-HD and FMT-DSK needed work! I had used FAC in FMT-DSK, thinking it was a user variable (without actually checking!?!)---had to change those memory references to hard numbers because there was no point in loading floating point support just to use it. I will test FORTHSYS and FORTHWRK later in the week. When those tests are done, I will post the draft again. Meanwhile, the two corrected words follow:

DSK‑HD ( sides density --- )

( WRITE A HEAD COMPATABLE WITH THE DISK MANAGER 26AUG11 LES)
BASE->R HEX
: DSK-HD SWAP SWPB + >R 0 CLEAR 0 BLOCK ( START SECTOR 0)
DUP !" FORTH " DUP A + DISK_SIZE @ 4 * SWAP !
DUP C + 944 SWAP ! DUP E + 534B SWAP ! DUP 10 + 2028 SWAP !
DUP 12 + R> SWAP ! DUP 14 + 24 0 FILL DUP 38 + C8 FF FILL
100 + ( START SECTOR 1) DUP 2 SWAP ! DUP 2+ FE 00 FILL
100 + ( START SECTOR 2) DUP !" SCREENS " DUP A + 0 SWAP !
DUP C + 2 SWAP ! DUP E + DISK_SIZE @ 4 * 3 - DUP >R SWAP !
DUP 10 + 80 SWAP ! DUP 12 + R> 2 * SWPB SWAP !
DUP 14 + 8 0 FILL >R 22 R 1C + C! DISK_SIZE @ 4 * 1- DUP 34 -
DUP F AND 4 SLA R 1D + C! 4 SRA R 1E + C!
03 R 1F + C! DUP 3 - F AND 4 SLA R 20 + C! 4 SRA R 21 + C!
R> 22 + 0DE 0 FILL FLUSH
; ( : DISK-HEAD DSK-HD ; ) R->BASE

FMT‑DSK ( drive sides density --- sectors )

( Format Disk, given drive #, sides & density 02SEP11 LES)
BASE->R DECIMAL 33 CLOAD RANDOMIZE 0 CLOAD FMT-DSK HEX
: FMT-DSK ( drive sides density --- sectors )
1 PABS @ VSBW 11 PABS @ 1+ VSBW ( subroutine 11h)
8350 C! ( density)
8351 C! ( sides)
1+ 834C C! ( drive)
28 834D C! ( 40 tracks)
DISK_BUF @ 834E ! ( VDP buffer)
PABS @ 8356 ! 0A 0E SYSTEM ( call DSRLNK subroutine)
834A @ ( leave sectors formatted)
; ( : FORMAT-DISK FMT-DSK ; ) R->BASE

FMT-DSK (as does FORMAT-DISK) formats a diskette that can then be used with TI FORTH to create FORTH screens; but, it writes nothing to sectors 0 and 1 that will allow the diskette to be used with normal file access. For that, you need to run DSK-HD (similar to DISK-HEAD), q.v. I may rewrite FMT-DSK to create a diskette with no name or files that can be used for file access as well as for FORTH screen editing. Or, maybe, I'll just write another word similar to DSK-HD that will create a no-name, empty disk that can have files added to it later with already existing file access words.

...lee

[Lee Stewart]

I have finished testing the code in Appendix L and, after some critical changes, it all works. I will post another draft tonight or tomorrow.

...lee

[Lee Stewart]

All...

Attached is the third draft (now finished---see later or click link--> TI Forth Instruction Manual). I now need to carefully review the document before I put it out as my "First Edition". I will certainly appreciate any assistance with this review. I will delete the previous drafts attached to previous messages and refer to this one.

Please note that the code I posted regarding DSK-HD has been changed in the attached draft.

If you read Appendix L, you will see that I am waffling about what I think should be done with FORMAT-DISK and DISK-HEAD vs. my new FMT-DSK and DSK-HD. I have other ideas in addition to my suggestions there; but, I do have a bad habit of presenting too many alternatives, I think.

...lee


PS: See final edition of the TI Forth Instruction Manual later in this thread.

Edited by Lee Stewart, Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:45 AM.

[Lee Stewart]

OK. It is finally done! I have finished editing and augmenting the original TI Forth Instruction Manual. It is attached as a PDF file. Please, let me know if there are any errors or discussions that are not clear, especially information that I have added. My additions will not always be obvious without comparison with the original document.

 TI_FORTH_Manual-ed(LES).pdf   1.07MB   54 downloads

...lee

[Lee Stewart]

All...

On page 43 of the above TI Forth Instruction Manual, there are GIF graphics I developed to show the real TI-99/4A keys. I have made graphics for all the keys except <ENTER>, <SHIFT>, <FCTN>, <SPACE>, <CTRL> and <ALPHA LOCK>, which I will add later. If there is any interest, I could pack them all up into a ZIP file and post them here.

...lee

Edited by Lee Stewart, Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:27 AM.

[retroclouds]

Very cool!

[Vorticon]

I was checking out my TI Forth diskette, and it turned out to be completely corrupted... Does anyone here happen to have a disk image of TI Forth by any chance, or is willing to mail me a copy?

[Lee Stewart]

Vorticon, on Wed Feb 22, 2012 7:08 PM, said:

I was checking out my TI Forth diskette, and it turned out to be completely corrupted... Does anyone here happen to have a disk image of TI Forth by any chance, or is willing to mail me a copy?

Here's a link to one of many copies of this disk at the Western Horizon website: TI Forth System Disk. This is the original TI disk. There are a few errors that need to be corrected per Appendix J, p. 198 in my edition of the TI Forth Instruction Manual somewhere above. If you like, I can post a corrected copy of the disk later.

...lee

[Vorticon]

That would be great! Thanks

[Lee Stewart]

Vorticon, on Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:50 PM, said:

That would be great! Thanks

I should be able to get it posted sometime tomorrow.

...lee

[Lee Stewart]

Vorticon, on Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:50 PM, said:

That would be great! Thanks

OK. Here it is:  TI-FORTH.zip   20.47K   12 downloads

...lee

Edited by Lee Stewart, Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:54 PM.