Volksforth – A Forth for Retro Computers | Hacker News Reader

Volksforth – A Forth for Retro Computers

volksforth.sourceforge.net

78 pointsRalfWausE17 comments

Use VolksForth MS-DOS on Linux (Ubuntu)

  * Install Ubuntu (22.04)

  * Install DOSBOX (PC and MS-DOS Emulator)
    ,----
    |    sudo apt install dosbox
    `----
  * Install `git', `dos2unix' and `make'
    ,----
    |    sudo apt install git make dos2unix
    `----
  * Clone the VolksForth source code
    ,----
    |    git clone https://github.com/forth-ev/volksforth
    `----
  * Inside the VolksForth source directory, change into `./8086/msdos'
  * Execute `make' to build the latest VolksForth and run the ANS
    compliance tests
  * To start VolksForth MS-DOS with the File-Interface, execute `dosbox
    v4thfile.com'

The more current, up-to-date source code for VolksForth can be found at https://github.com/forth-ev/volksforth

Nobody deserves to use SourceForge!

Brave warriors use Forth. I came to find out about it in the Computer History Museum.

I think that the information provided is a bit messy. There is a link to a German language website which feature a lot of projects the society is currently working on, with stuff hosted on GitHub instead of SourceForge.

Retro source hosting for retro project.

Please send an stamped SAE to Sourceforge, The internet, 192.984.453.834.

Back in the war days, we got it on ROM. :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Ace

On the Sinclair ZX-81 you could substitute the ROM chip with another one with Forth in in instead of Sinclair Basic. IIRC it was sold by third parties not official one.

Yes, Your Sinclair and Crash magazines used to have ads for it.

I have most of one of those, somewhere. The vacuum-formed plastic case crumbled and fell apart, sadly.

> Brave warriors use Forth.

Floegel'd[1]!

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/forthsub/comments/bh4tpt/forth_on_t...

Brave warriors implement Forth.

Seriously tho, the weird thing about Forth is that it's one of those languages that you really have try to implement, at least in the most basic form, to truly grok it. It's all about "implementation details".

If you don't understand Forth, you don't understand computers.

In college, I designed a stack-based CPU. Started as register-based, but I realized using registers for storage and the stack for operations made it so much easier to program.

If you wish to understand computers, you must first invent the universe.

That bit's easy, it's all just quantum mechanics at superluminal energies.

It's printer drivers that are the hard part.

But if you do understand forth, you might not understand why the general public actually likes computers in the first place.

Forth is about as far from everything people expect a computer to be while still using a computer.

It's almost like the Marcel Duchamp urinal or all blue canvas of programming. If you judge it by the standards I would normally use to evaluate a language, it's probably close to the literal bottom of the list of stuff I'd ever use, maybe the only language I can't imagine ever bothering to learn. but people who love it, really love it.

It's not just another programming language, it's a totally new way to relate to computers, and a new idea of what they are for with totally different values from those that the rest of us use.

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