amforth-devel

[Amforth-devel] Video quod vadis

[Christian B. <cas...@ca...>]

Servus, (=bavarian for hello and goodbye)

as you may know I have written some video routines for amforth (currently 
seperate).
I now wonder what direction we should go with them. There are already some 
routines hidden in the repository.
My personal vision is to have video output at 64x16 plus a status line 
(technically possible) so we can display forth blocks directly. This would 
save a lot of memory. 
If we would then also have the block commands, amforth would be on its way 
towards a fully functional desktop operating system. :)
Seriously if you can edit blocks, and send them to a printer, you can already 
write letters with your system. Now add a simple database, and you can do 
mass-mailings.
If you add some kind of networking via I2C you can send a kind of e-mail.

What do you think?

Servus
  Casandro

Re: [Amforth-devel] Video quod vadis

[Matthias T. <mt...@we...>]

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Hi Christian,

Christian Berger wrote:
> Servus, (=bavarian for hello and goodbye)
> 
> as you may know I have written some video routines for amforth (currently 
> seperate).

If you have any updates, you can send them to me (directly).

> I now wonder what direction we should go with them. There are already some 
> routines hidden in the repository.

I'm happy to sit-and-wait and nitpick the cherries ;=)

> If we would then also have the block commands, amforth would be on its way 
> towards a fully functional desktop operating system. :)

(Standard-) blocks are somewhat difficult since they need a lot of RAM
for the buffer(s). IMHO blocks can only be used with external RAM and/or
a modified RAM - Fetch/Store to emulate a MMU with paging.

> Seriously if you can edit blocks, and send them to a printer

I doubt that a windows el-cheapo GDI printer will ever work ;=)
Postscript OTOH may work well, esp for a forth system ...

> If you add some kind of networking via I2C you can send a kind of e-mail.

There is even a ethernet connection possible (with IP etc). Hardware
exists.

Bye
Matthias
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Re: [Amforth-devel] Video quod vadis

[Christian B. <cas...@ca...>]

Am Freitag 23 Mai 2008 21:12:04 schrieb Matthias Trute:
> Hi Christian,

> If you have any updates, you can send them to me (directly).

Well there is nothing new other what is on here. Yes, it now supports the 
@-key. I'm still not very happy about the keyboard routines.
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/94193

> I'm happy to sit-and-wait and nitpick the cherries ;=)

Good :)

> (Standard-) blocks are somewhat difficult since they need a lot of RAM
> for the buffer(s). IMHO blocks can only be used with external RAM and/or
> a modified RAM - Fetch/Store to emulate a MMU with paging.

Hmm, maybe we could have block read and write commands. But for that we'd need 
memory allocation words.

With memory allocation, it would also be possible to have a more dynamic video 
display. For example we could have an empty image to need less memory than a 
full one. Just like the popular ZX80 homecomputer does.

> > Seriously if you can edit blocks, and send them to a printer
>
> I doubt that a windows el-cheapo GDI printer will ever work ;=)

I doubt GDI printers are still around. Most now have either PCL or Postscript 
or some Linux-only stuff.

> Postscript OTOH may work well, esp for a forth system ...

True, we could have parallel processing. :)

> > If you add some kind of networking via I2C you can send a kind of e-mail.
>
> There is even a ethernet connection possible (with IP etc). Hardware
> exists.

TCP/IP needs a _lot_ of memory (800 bytes) and ethernet is not only rather 
expensive, but it also takes quite a lot of power. My idea would be to have a 
tiny stripped down networking protocoll which can work with tiny buffers. I2C 
can already do quite a bit of what we want. For example it already forces the 
slave to acknownledge the bytes. A master could just send bytes until the 
slave doesn't acknownledge anymore.
As I2C is multi-master we can essentially use it like Ethernet.
We can still define a "gateway-protocoll" in which you can contact 
a "router-node" and tell it to forward your connection.

> Bye
> Matthias

Servus
  Casandro

Re: [Amforth-devel] Video quod vadis

[Matthias T. <mt...@we...>]

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Christian Berger wrote:

> Well there is nothing new other what is on here. Yes, it now supports the 
> @-key. I'm still not very happy about the keyboard routines.
> http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/94193

It would be nice if the keyboard words would work with EKEY from
the forth200x words. That would make code page changes very easy too.

> Hmm, maybe we could have block read and write commands. But for that we'd need 
> memory allocation words.

ALLOT exists ;=)

>>> If you add some kind of networking via I2C you can send a kind of e-mail.
>> There is even a ethernet connection possible (with IP etc). Hardware
>> exists.
> 
> TCP/IP needs a _lot_ of memory (800 bytes) and ethernet is not only rather 
> expensive, but it also takes quite a lot of power.

800 bytes is less than a single ANS block, and power is not essential as
long as a tv device is concerned ;=)

btw: On tuxgraphics there is an atmega88 with an ethernet interface and
a webserver running on it.

> My idea would be to have a 
> tiny stripped down networking protocoll which can work with tiny buffers.

Sound like you are looking for CAN.

Bye
Matthias

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Re: [Amforth-devel] Video quod vadis

[Christian B. <cas...@ca...>]

Am Samstag 24 Mai 2008 21:50:35 schrieb Matthias Trute:
> Christian Berger wrote:

> It would be nice if the keyboard words would work with EKEY from
> the forth200x words. That would make code page changes very easy too.

I should look into that. As I mentioned before, I'm not really that fluently 
with Forth.

> > Hmm, maybe we could have block read and write commands. But for that we'd
> > need memory allocation words.
>
> ALLOT exists ;=)

I also need to look into that. It would be great if one had something simmilar 
to the memory handling C does, only working.

> 800 bytes is less than a single ANS block, and power is not essential as
> long as a tv device is concerned ;=)

Well if you have 2048 bytes of RAM on your device total, it is a problem. 
Besides for the ethernet interface you'd still need the SPI, which is already 
used by the video. And Ethernet is _really_ expensive. It costs more than the 
rest of the system, including an additional large screen television set for 
output to larger crowds.
And a normal large TV-set only takes about 10 watts peak, probably a lot less 
with white text on black background. Small non-direct view screens even take 
less power.

> btw: On tuxgraphics there is an atmega88 with an ethernet interface and
> a webserver running on it.

Of course, there have been many projects involving ethernet and TCP/IP. So far 
most only support IPv4.

Well I'll need to look into it. Maybe there's a way to implement Ethernet with 
very little external hardware. Yes, I know there are single chip Ethernet 
interfaces around.

> > My idea would be to have a
> > tiny stripped down networking protocoll which can work with tiny buffers.
>
> Sound like you are looking for CAN.

CAN is so bloated and expensive. I2C on the contrary is widely availiable in 
microcontrollers and easy to implement in software.
Well OK, I admit it, I don't really like CAN. :)

> Bye
> Matthias

Servus
  Casandro