Re: [Amforth-devel] Starting amforth

[D N. <dny...@at...>]

Long ago, I worked with forth extensively, but haven't for a while,  so 
I have forgotten much. Also, that was work for an employer, so I don't 
have copies of what I did back then. So I'll have to reinvent things I 
remember doing.

One of the things I did back then was I made a word called run_command" 
Which compiled a literal string like ." does, but at run time it stuffed 
the string into the command buffer and triggered the outer interpreter. 
That let us issue FORGET commands for words that didn't exist yet at 
compile time, etc. I've been thinking I'd like to do that again, but 
this time maybe set up an amforth so that on cold boot it copies a 
string (if it exists) from eeprom into the command buffer, then begins 
execution. On warm boot, doesn't copy the string. It could be made even  
a little more fancy, with maybe a few seconds count down before it runs 
the buffer, and read ISR checks any received character for ^C and warm 
boots if it sees one. I think that would make it very easy to develop 
code in the field, set up automatic run if I think it's ready, break in 
if it's not right. (I'd still want to incorporate Karl's eeprom loader, 
or redevelop the same thing, though...)

Right now I'm working with freepcb to build a hardware target, but I'll 
get to those things in due course. I think I have a hardware fix for 
serial console timing problems, but I'll have to test it to be sure, first.