[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Fri, 12 Jun 2009, Martinus Scriblerus wrote: > 2009/6/12 Ray Smith <rjsmith@xxxxxxx>: > >> Forth was available for the BBC on disk and on a rom chip. You just plugged >> it in. We had the speech rom ( I think featuring Kenneth Kendall the >> newsreader) and a wordprocessor for instant action. >> >> There was also a robotic arm for the beeb that was controlled with the forth >> language. >> >> Can't recall right now if that was used with the Z80 add on that linked with >> some unit called the tube which cave if full z80 and cpm. > > Tried the Z80 tube 2nd processor, didn't really get on with it. Didn't > take to CPM. A friend of mine bought a Unicorn - BBC Micro with > Motorola 6800 2nd processor running Unix back in the early to mid > '80s. The tube was a 2MHz processor level bus - I think would could access memoty over it, but I never really looked hard. There was an independant Z80 co processor IIRC. I had their 4MHz 6502 tube box at work where I was developing some big BCPL programs at the time. I also had a 16032 co-processor too (or was it a 32x16 or ...) anyway, some 16/32 bit chip that was going to run unix... I don't think it ever did, but there you go... All my Beeb kit got stolen shortly after that. > Tried forth on the Beeb but never found a compelling application that > encouraged me to develop full proficiency. Tried to get into > assembler, both 6502 and eventually ARM but the same thing happened, > which rather impressively backed up the judgement of an aptitude test > I took in 1978 - the recommendation was that I might have a future in > computing but to avoid low-level languages. Hehe... I'm done too much assember that was good for me. I don't touch it now (but did dive into some microPic stuff a while back )-: 6502, 8080 (with a Z80 assembler), Prime, PDP11, Sparc, i860 (yuk, but wow), transputer (yes, they have an assembly language!), sparc, Arm, but never any x86 stuff. Probably just as well or my brain would have exploded by now. Oh, sweet16 too. Did a lot of that for some bizarre reason... not a true assembler though :) > So by the late '80s I was writing telecom control programs in a > language developed just for our use where we had 256 pre-named > variables and the highest level function was GOSUB. Excellent! Try transputer - all your (3) registers can be scrambled after any jump instruction! (as that's when it can do a re-schedule to run another task!) And for those who haven't seen it, google for the 99 bottles of beer site - I submitted one in asterisk diaplan a while back :) An excellent way to waste the rest of this Fridays afternoon!!! Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html