I'm new to Forth and thought it would be a useful addition to my older 8-bit
machines. I've tried a few Forth's from the Walnut Creek CP/M CD, but can't
seem to find one that allows me to load Forth code that was previously saved
to a disk file (with a generic text editor). The closest I've found was
Forth83 (8080 Forth 83 Model V 2.1.0 from June 84) that actually mentions
files in the docs. All the others talk about disk blocks - which cause
screwy behavior (I guess nobody got around to connecting the early Forth's
to the disk calls in BDOS).

I think I must be missing something that's obvious. Because, it seems to
me, just loading a text file from disk should be a very simple thing.

On Mar 19, 2:02 pm, "John Crane" wrote:

Look for the version of hForth for CP/M ... it is a Forth-94 Forth
that includes the standard Forth-94 file handling words. Some early
Forth for CP/M will have been Forths developed for other Z80 systems
ported to CP/M.

I believe there may be a copy at Taygeta .... I haven't checked in a
while. The info file still works (I just now checked that)

ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Compilers/native/dos/hForth/hfz80v99.txt

Try:

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 12:02:30 -0600, John Crane wrote:

Most Forth systems use disk blocks, no matter if that disk blocks are
managed by a filesystem or are located on some sort of raw device and
there is nothing screwy about this. To avoid destroying disk data I have
modified the early FigFORTH systems for CP/M to leave drive a: alone and
use only drive b: for their disk blocks. This is easy to do and avoids
destroying the CP/M filesystem by accident.

I use the following Forth Systems on CP/M that use a file as block storage:

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 22:09:57 +0000, Edmund H. Ramm wrote:

Eddi,

the latest version of your Z80 figForth i was able to find with sources
is Z80 fig-FORTH 1.1g. If there is any later version I would be
interested. I also would be interested in fig sources for Z80 that still
use the disk device, because all versions I got so far are for the 8080
and maybe you have an earlier Z80 source?

"Udo Munk" unix4fun.org> wrote in message
news:pan.2008.03.20.19.48.08.531999@unix4fun.org...

John Crane wrote:

...

On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:25:15 -0600, John Crane wrote:

Primitive lets you do things with the disk that the os won't allow.

On Mar 20, 5:25 pm, "John Crane" wrote:

This file ...

ftp://ftp.taygeta.com/pub/Forth/Compilers/native/dos/hForth/hfz80v99.zip

... includes an emulator, but the Forth is for a real CP/M ... after
all, if it didn't run on CP/M, it wouldn't run on the emulator.

However, I would be surprised if its the early version of .zip that
has a CP/M unzip utility. It would have to be decompressed on a DOS,
Windows, Linux or Mac system, and the decompressed files copied.

Bruce McFarling wrote:

On Mar 20, 5:25 pm, "John Crane" wrote:

I have unzipped the Z80 hForth 0.99 package, and put the files at:

http://groups.google.com/group/niclos-for-forth-94/files

... which is a Google Group that was going to get created sometime
this summer. It is, in any event, _apropos_ to what the group will be,
as hForth for Z80 makes an excellent test-bed for compatibility in the
setting of a free standing small system ... running BMW on it revealed
several portability problems with BMW.

The Google Groups file uploader balks at uploading .COM files, so the
file HFZ80RAM.CPM should be renamed HFZ80RAM.COM for a CPM system. For
a native CP/M system, there is no need for the HFZ80RAM.DCM file,
which is a renamed DOS .COM file.