forth os & interface

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Halliday" <dh@...>
To: <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 1:25 PM
Subject: RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Interface. Gauging interest.


> Sheesh - haven't thought about Forth in a long long time...
***********
About 1985 I wrote a forth system that works ( still !!! ) off of 5 1/4
floppies , a 286 pc box, ( 12 mhz !! ) and drives 3 Aerotec amplifyers ,
making my dinosaur Boss 4 Bridgeport run just fine ( sorta slow tho ) with 3
steppers, runs 3 axis at once, and is actually fun to program. Heck I got
a Kitamura 0 that only runs 2.5 axis !! hmmmm...

The neat thing is if you get bored, you can change the command " scripts",
or " words " in real time, and in seconds... to another command ... ie, we
now have a command that is " 0.5 route-a-circle-right " heh heh, which all
the operators know is going to route a 0.5 radius full circle from wherever
the end mill is located when it received that command. If I wanted, I could
rename route--a-circle-right to " G2 " with the redefinition as such
: G2 route-a-circle-right ;
and now say " 0.5 G2 " and now use either definition if I wish.

You can also make up scripts such as " MakePartOne " etc. etc.... or how
about " SimonSezPart1" heh heh ....

All code is open and can be changed on a whim on any text editor. the OS
is in Forth and takes up only a few thousand bytes !!! We can put the
Osystem and all the part programming for most parts on the same 5 1/4
floppy, including the tools library etc. Try that with XP ... (g)...
For fun, you can even write some assembly moves in Forth in your part
program if you want to impress someone (g). This is almost never necessary
for normal parts however.
************
Just had to push the forth thing a little ... too bad it splintered into a
thousand variations of the language, the original idea was to keep it one
big happy family, I don[t even bother to keep up on it now, just buy an xp
and more memory and faster chips and cuss when it crashes..... (g) like most
others.
If any thoughts, please contact me offlist, I don[t always get all these
posts read every day. regards ken campbell, www.deltainc-usa.com

oh yeah, I believe _Postscript_ is written in forth.



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