** Ralph Corderoy <ra...@inputplus.co.uk> [2010-07-12 23:15]: <snip> > > I'm afraid Forth passed me by! > > Me too! Me and my friends were exposed to it as kids on the > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Ace in shops but that foiled the > normal
Lovely machine. I've still got mine which I picked up at a Beaulieu boat jumble shortly after Jupiter Cantab ceased trading. It was clearly one of the last on the production line - quite literally in fact, since it hadn't been completed and lacked the top cover. It was fully functional though, with the tape, PSU, manual and keyboard membrane. The Membrane had silicon pads under each key which completed the circuit etched on the motherboard, rather than the membrane used on the Sinclair machines. > 10PRINT "HELLO"; > 20GOTO 10 > > And then it also came along as a ROM for the BBC B from Acornsoft. By > then I knew the rough idea, you define words to augment the existing > FORTH ones and the interpreter threads execution of them together, but > nothing more. > > So coming across that above tutorial was interesting. I now know the > equivalent to the above is > > : hello begin ." Hello " again ; hello > > but the Jupter Ace has gone from the shops. > > Given early BASICs had poor control flow, i.e. IF, GOTO, and GOSUB, I > can see with hindsight that FORTH was a lot better choice at the time > with all kinds of WHILE-loops, etc, like the endless BEGIN...AGAIN one > above. And given most of those were words defined using FORTH you could > add your own. > > It also has [ and ] which let you switch to immediate mode during > compilation, IOW the definition of a word could use the result of some > FORTH code run at compile time rather than run time, handy if you know > it's a compile-time constant. Great fun. I got a copy of Forth for my Spectrum too, although never quite settled on the environment provided as well as the Jupiter Ace. As it happens I've also just bought a copy of Commodore 64 Forth+ from Melbourne House on eBay (I'm a bit of a sad retro nutter I guess!). The only trouble is that, unlike most of my retro stuff, it is still shrink wrapped. I usually avoid that because I'll be torn on opening it and I really want to play! I guess I should get around to installing gforth to play with, after all it's just a case of aptitude install gforth !! ** end quote [Ralph Corderoy] -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 ====================================================================== Sponsor me in the Moonlit Memories Walk for Rowans Hospice A 12 mile walk along Southsea seafront starting midnight 19th June Visit: http://www.justgiving.com/MoonlitTansom2010 ====================================================================== Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- Next meeting: Bournemouth, Wednesday 2010-08-04 20:00 http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2645413 Chat: http://www.mibbit.com/?server=irc.blitzed.org&channel=%23dorset List info: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/dorset
