[Herb Johnson: July 2025 discussion in cosmacelf (groups.io) turned to 1802 FIG-Forth. Here's
some posts and a collection of references to the ACE group's "Ipso Facto" paper newsletter
of the 1980's on ACE's version of FIG Forth.  Association of Computer Experimenters published
from Canada.]


Re: Emma 02 and Forth
Anthony L Hill
Jul 22 2025  #49071  

On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 05:37 PM, David Brunell wrote:

    Thanks for looking into that so quickly, Marcel. It's not a big deal for me as I'm going to be writing my own "disk" routines that write to EEPROM instead. But perhaps someone will come along in the future and want to run Fig-Forth as it was originally intended. Currently, it hangs if you try to execute any words that involve disk I/O.
     

If you are interested I've added a few things to the A.C.E. release of fig-FORTH over the years.  I first wrote about it ~43 years ago in Ipso Facto issue #29 (May 1982).  
 
link >  IPSO FACTO Issue #29
http://cosmacelf.com/publications/newsletters/ipso-facto/ipso-facto-29.pdf

There were several follow-on articles. 
 
Off the top of my head, I've added the following to the original fig-FORTH release : 

    RAM disk I/O  - as many 1K FORTH screens as you have free memory  - preferably battery backed / EPROM / EEPROM
    Line Editor - code pre-assembled as words in a FORTH dictionary for editing RAM disk FORTH "screens" (see above)
    1802 Assembler - code pre-assembled as words in a FORTH dictionary to allow adding inline 1802 code to other Forth words
    Multitasking - cooperative multitasking support for concurrent tasks - task 1 runs the console (works best with an interrupt source)
    ROM-able - figFORTH would run from ROM but had a tricky bug if you tried that
    1854 UART support - interrupt driven for TX & RX
    RTC support - interrupt driven Motorola MC146818
    Support for a few other hardware specific things like an ADC0808 A/D converter, 8255 I/O,  eight digit 7-segment display, and a single line alpha-numeric LCD display
    .... and probably some other goodies. 

 
At one time It worked with my WD1771 dual floppy disk drives but sadly those, and the supporting code, are long gone.  However, It did run my "home automation" system for many years but mostly just blinks lights these days.
 
I have source code that I still play with and use - I currently assemble using A18. - Tony Hill

David Brunell
Jul 22 2025 #49073  

Wow [Tony], that would be absolutely fantastic. While I'm still struggling to fully wrap my head around FORTH, I've decided to make it the primary means of writing code for my embedded controller. I want to be able to boot FORTH from EEPROM at 0000h and utilize RAM starting at 8000h. Any new words defined could optionally be saved to EEPROM. I also need a facility to "autoexec" a FORTH program at boot time.
 
Would you be open to me putting whatever code I finally end up with on GitHub (with proper attribution of course)? Here is the repo for my project: https://github.com/quantalume/COSMAC_controller.

===============================================

Ipso Facto articles on FIG Forth, from index and issues at
http://cosmacelf.com/publications/newsletters/ipso-facto/

(Issues prior to issue 29 included Forth articles.)

issue 29 May 1982: 
FORTH IMPLEMENTATION NOTES - ACE SYSTEMS
- based on FIG Forth for the 1802

Issue 31 Oct 82: 
An 1802 Assembler for 1802 fig FORTH
- also bugs in FIG Forth 

Issue 32 Dec 82:
FORTH IMPLEMENTATION NOTES - 3
- more bugs
1802 FIG-Forth  "Match" and string editor (Ken Mantel)

Issue 34 Apr 83:
MOre Forth Programs
- more bugs

Issue 35 Jun 83:
Using fig-Forth with Systems using Interrupts
- related to 1861 use

issue 37 Oct 83:
A VLIST fix for Fig-Forth
AN 1802 ASSEMBLER - FORTH STYLE!
Fig-Forth Expansion
- calling SCRT routines from Forth
Forth and the Smarterm-80

issue 38 Dec 83: 
FORTH : Right 1802 Assembly Code 
- fix for I word

issue 39 Feb 84:
Full Screen Editor for Fig-FORTH
- Netronics video
Forth Full Screen Editor and More
- Forth-79

issue 40 May 84:
An Index of Forth Articles (to date)
- also an index of Ipso Facto articles (to date)

issue 41 Jul 84:
Forth recursion: an update
- FIG Forth, simple word definition

issue 42:
Comac Conquest
- spacewar game in FIG-Forth 1802 for ACE VDU