[Coco] PD-10 Forth

[M. David Johnson]

>From within NEWFORTH.BIN I used LOAD EDIT.DAT (no quotes) to successfully load the editor, but I haven't had any success trying to use it yet. 

However, I WAS able to use Telewriter 128 to prepare block files. 

PD-10 doesn't use raw blocks as some Forths do. It uses text files (with a .DAT extension) which are organized like blocks. Example:

-----

( TSTFIL01.DAT )
( THIS IS TEST FILE FOR BLOCK NUMBER ONE )
0 VARIABLE VAR01
: WORD01 2973 VAR01 ! ;
: WORD02 VAR01 @ U. ;

-----

I've had success using one block per file. I suspect you can put more than one block in a file, but I haven't tried it yet - the one block per file method was especially useful for segmenting the input during debugging.

A few caveats -

FORTH.BIN doesn't seem to work correctly (particularly the LOAD word), 32KFORTH.BIN won't load in Vcc, but NEWFORTH.BIN seems to be okay.

The FRTHDOC files are apparently corrupted, in that FRTHDOC4.TXT appears to just be a copy of FRTHDOC1.TXT. I haven't yet been able to figure out what to do with the FORTHMAN.UL1, 2, and 3 files yet, although they do seem to LOAD without errors.

PD-10 likes all caps.

Like most fig-forths, PD-10 expects a value before the word VARIABLE.

THEN is undefined - use ENDIF instead.

0> is undefined - use : 0> 0 > ;

It doesn't seem to like indentations in word definitions.

I may be doing something wrong, but PD-10 doesn't seem to like stack comments in word definitions - maybe some form of shadow screens would be useful ???

Use a format like LOAD TSTFIL01.DAT (no quotes) to load block files. (Also note: I have experienced some cases where a LOAD resulted in what looked like error messages, yet everything LOADed worked correctly ).

10 0 DO I U. LOOP runs from 0 through 10 instead of from 0 through 9 as would be expected, for example, in 83-Standard Forths.

--
M. David Johnson
mdj at bds-soft.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Derek John Evans
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 8:45 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] PD-10 Forth

Cool. Are you able to load the editor with your version? I tried the copy online and I wasn't able to get the editor working with xroar or vcc. I'll try again this arvo.
________________________________
From: M. David Johnson<mailto:mdj at bds-soft.com>
Sent: ‎24/‎01/‎2019 11:47 PM
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'<mailto:coco at maltedmedia.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] PD-10 Forth

Mystery SOLVED !

Thank you.

PD-10 SuperForth is indeed the "forth.zip" in disks/programming on the archive.

--
M. David Johnson
mdj at bds-soft.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Derek John Evans
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2019 1:09 AM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] PD-10 Forth

I believe SuperForth is on the archive named as "forth.zip" (disks/programming)

Maybe load your PD10 bin into notepad to see if any text will give some clues.







________________________________
From: Coco <coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com> on behalf of M. David Johnson <mdj at bds-soft.com>
Sent: Thursday, 24 January 2019 4:57 PM
To: 'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'
Subject: Re: [Coco] PD-10 Forth

Here's an update on what PD-10 Forth is NOT.

In what little documentation I found on the old disk (which BTW doesn't seem to mention any publisher or publication date, and which does not display any Copyright notice), I noted that it was also called PD-10 SUPERFORTH.

I came across an ad for a SUPERFORTH published by Quasar Animations in San Diego (cf. the ad on page 77, January 1984 issue, Color Computer Magazine: Quasar Animations, 1520 Pacific Beach Drive, San Diego, CA 92109).

But, when I contacted Quasar SUPERFORTH's author, David (Talin) Joiner, he confirmed that the two Forths were NOT the same, and that he had never heard of PD-10 SUPERFORTH.

Sigh :-(

--
M. David Johnson
mdj at bds-soft.com



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