Hi Carl, hi all,
On 07/20/2013 03:30 PM, Matthias Trute wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> there seems to go something wrong with the mailing list,
> so I forward a message to it. Can someone help Carl?
>
> Matthias
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Carl Baxter <carl8...@gmail.com <mailto:carl8...@gmail.com>>
> To: amforth-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> <mailto:amforth-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 21:50:20 -0700
> Subject: Native Forth for Arduino Uno
> I am developing a project using an Arduino Uno board and
> their c/c++ language. It would be more productive for
> me to be doing this in Forth but the project deadline keeps
> me from stopping work, getting the necessary tools and
> learning how to put amForth on the board.
>
> Is there some source of a programmed Forth chip that I could
> just install and be up and running.
Not that I know of.
> I would think
> there would be a market for such an item. It seems to me that when
> someone has already programmed one chip for the Arduino Uno he has
> solved the
> problem for everybody.
Sounds easy, but isn't. I (or Matthias or *someone*) could provide
.hex files and the problem seems solved. Someone else could preprogramm
arduino to forthuinos and ship them, at hopefully modest cost.
However, it isn't easy.
a. How to flash the arduino?
amForth and the arduino bootloader programm are mutually exclusive.
+ could the bootloader be fixed to export an API to (i!) (the function
to write a word to flash)? Probably so, however, this code is under
someone elses control. This someone else has no incentive to do and
maintain these changes, so this is a dead end imho.
+ could amForth be changed into a "sketch" such that it loads with said
bootloader? Probably so, however, its less clear that the result is
something you can or want to use "standalone" without the arduino
bootloader.
The "obvious" solution to this problem is knowing how to assemble the
relevant .hex files and having a usable programmer to flash the arduino.
This is imho a bigger hurdle to a beginner (of Forth *and* microcontrollers
at the same time).
b. How to recover a bricked arduino?
amForth puts little in the way between the programmer and the controller.
In other words you are entirely able to change some important byte in
flash or eeprom, and then your controller may be dead. Dead as in "it
is not talking to me any more".
To recover this situation, you are back to solving point a.
You can try to make amForth unbrickable. Again, whether these changes are
desirable is not clear.
c. Trying out amForth
A colleage of mine and I have given several workshops to interested folks
in the past:
+ up to 20 people, 1 board for 2 people
+ approx. 3 hours time (which is short) up to 8 hours.
+ we hand out preflashed arduinos with danger shields (they have LEDS
and a buzzer among other stuff)
+ never underestimate the time it takes until everyone has a working
serial connection!
+ The preloaded system has already loaded bitnames.frt and a handful
of other libs.
+ we then guide the folks through making a morse code emitter.
This is great fun. But we always need to reprogram one or more boards
due to "bricking is easy"
So this opens another route: can amForth be made "always recoverable".
Probably yes, but again: it is not clear, whether the result pleases
me or anyone else not using arduinos. Several pieces to make amForth
recoverable have been discussed in the mailing list or presented as
Examples in (Vierte Dimension, german only, found at www.forth-ev.de).
It doesn't make amForth any simpler internally.
I should mention that we had lengthy discussions about which
board to use. I personally prefer other boards over the arduino. However,
they are so well known and easy to get that we eventually went with them.
d. What exactly should the preprogrammed arduino have?
I *always* need to add my favourite stuff to the plain vanilla
amForth build. For example: I *HATE* case insensitivity. FOO is
not Foo is not foo, imho. Therefore I will always set
.set WANT_IGNORECASE = 0
whereas the default is 1. We haven't programmed a single line yet,
but we already have to make a decision. Along the same line of
argument, which of these should be included by default?
.include "dict_wl.inc"
.include "words/fill.asm"
.include "words/1ms.asm"
.include "words/notequalzero.asm"
.include "words/uzerodotr.asm"
.include "words/udotr.asm"
;.include "words/no-jtag.asm"
.include "words/spirw.asm"
.include "words/2spirw.asm"
Now, what exactly should be on a preprogrammed board? And does one size
fit them all? Probably not.
I firmly believe that teaching people to use amForth includes the toolchain
to recover a bricked board. If I send them home without that, they will hate
me very soon, and very understandably so.
I'm not saying that solving the original problem is impossible, but I'm
probably not much help in doing so. Writing more libraries may help. That's
why some of my code can be found in
svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/amforth/code/applications/ewlib
Use at your own risk.
> If no one is making a market in programmed Forth chips, I would be
> willing to buy 50 if I had to and try to promote them. The way it is
> being done now is very off-putting to people who would just like to
> try Forth,
And then there is always the option to use gforth on your PC. Forth is not
limited to microcontrollers. But trying out microcontrollers for the first
or second time together with trying out Forth may be a fairly big pile.
Cheers,
Erich, not being of much help this time.
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