Re: [Amforth-devel] Connection to host

[Andy K. <an...@ak...>]

Must admit I agree with mathias re the unsuitability of retaining the 
arduino bootloader.

I do however agree that leveraging amforth using off the shelf commodity 
hardware. ie a re-purposed arduino mega board. Would be a definite boost 
  for the project.

The are available very cost effectively, www.DFRobot.com are even making 
them and exporting them from china.



Tom Arnold wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 09:22:22PM +0000, Andy Kirby wrote:
>> What would be really cool would be if you could take an off the shelf 
>> Arduino Mega, burn amforth onto it and then use this Forthduino to clone 
>> itself to other off the shelf Arduino Mega's
>>
>> I guess a new design of Atmel based micro board that was purely amforth 
>> would be cool too.
> 
> Making amforth work with the Arduino bootloader I think would open up
> amforth to a lot more people who may not otherwise want to undertake trying
> to play with it.  Forth has a somewhat bad ( un-deserved ) reputation as being 
> difficult to deal with as it is.  Having it incompatible with widely
> available cheap hardware just adds to that.  The Arduino bootloader is
> nothing magical.  Its just a simple software implementation of the STK500
> protocol.  
> 
> Going with Arduino vs a dedicated amforth board opens up amforth to the
> world of arduino "shields" ( I hate that name ) which widens up the hardware
> available to quickly throw at a project.
> 
> I know there are reasons why its not supported, like Arduino didn't exist
> with amforth first came about, I'm only saying it'd be nice.  I wish I had
> the skillset to make it happen.  It is worth pointing out that a USB based
> Atmel programmer is dirt cheap these days ( $20 or so from AdaFruit I think
> ).  That makes it fairly easy to turn an Arduino Mega into an AmforthMega.
> Easy but not trivial.  Supporting the loader would make it trivial...
>