Re: [Amforth] AmForth Weekend 1 (2020-06-27/28)

[Charley S. <csh...@su...>]

I only recently learned about amforth (I guess I'd heard of it, but hadn't looked at it yet). I was especially interested in having it run on ARM, but I don't have the experience it would take to figure out all the standard assembler stuff. I've always used Forth target compilers/assemblers in the past. If I could learn to install amforth on various ARM chips, that would be awesome. So far I prefer amforth to Mecrisp-Stellaris because it's so simple and easy to understand, like the old days on the Atari 800.

I've played with amforth a bit on an Arduino UNO and liked it a lot. I do wish there were more memory for block buffers, but that's a minor complaint.

I'd be happy if there were a community of ARM amforth users to confer with and if I could get it going on various ARM boards. But if there isn't enough interest in that, then sticking with AVR is probably fine.

Does anybody out there know how to get USB-HID working on an AVR 32u4 via amforth? That would be so wonderful!

Thanks Erich for what you're doing!

Charley

On 6/28/2020 7:29 AM, Erich Wälde wrote:
> Dear AmForthers,
>
> due to some unlikely fluctuation in probability space (or some
> other excuse) I declared this weekend to be "AmForth weekend 1"
> --- for me at least. While being working on this I decided to let
> you know, what is happening, and what is going around in my head
> regarding AmForth.
>
>
> - Contributions
>
>    I am very grateful for everyone who is sending anything to the
>    mailing list. Thank you! This is imho an important way to show
>    that this project is not dead. I am also very grateful that
>    Tristan W. and Martin N. have been helping out answering
>    questions. I will not be able to keep this project alive on my
>    own, so "Thank you!"
>
>    Along the same lines: "Welcome to all newcomers!"
>
>    That being said: I have been asked whether I accept email to my
>    private address. Yes I do. HOWEVER, every email not going
>    through the list, for whatever reason, does not add to the
>    "this project is alive" feature, does not inform all the others
>    on the list. I admit that I have been guilty of this myself
>    much too often. I herewith sincerely apologize --- while being
>    practical and easy it will be wrong in the long run.
>
>
> - Commits
>
>    r2443: added one-line patch to amforth-shell.py, provided by
>           Tristan Williams. Will now report filenames which occur
>           more than once.
>
>    r2444: AVR8: restored avr8/words/no-jtag.asm from release 5.5;
>           removed not functional avr8/devices/*/words/no-jtag.asm
>           files.
>
>    r2445: added comment about last commit to index.rst
>
>    r2446: Added refcard manually generated from 5.5 with a
>           warning! This is outdated!
>
>           Commented Projects/ClockWorks: added version from
>           2018-12-15; they were apparently lost or never published
>           on the website. This version features a clock reading
>           the DCF77 time radio signal.
>
>
> - Open Issues
>
>    as far as I'm aware:
>
>    - WDT (Martin Nicholas) patch
>
>      Martin has provided a small patch (.asm) regarding the
>      startup of the WDT (watch dog timer) on atmega2560
>      controllers. I have honestly no idea, whether or not this
>      will break something else, and under which conditions exactly
>      this is needed.
>      link to email archive (Martin Nicholas, June 2019)
>      https://sourceforge.net/p/amforth/mailman/message/36682958/
>
>    - Multitasker documentation
>
>      This needs to be tested and enhanced in a few ways. It might
>      be that the current example in the Cookbook section is simply
>      broken. There have been questions about how to better
>      populate the task local user area. Maybe this could be
>      answered by a more complex example. There has been the
>      question about producing output from a task (not the cmd
>      loop), its collision with the shared HLD/TAB area, and
>      possible ways to solve this (semaphores, task local HLD/TAB).
>      link to email archive (Jan Kromhout Feb 2019)
>      https://sourceforge.net/p/amforth/mailman/message/36596842/
>
>    - " du< " is missing
>      link to email archive (Martin Nicholas August 2019)
>      https://sourceforge.net/p/amforth/mailman/message/36748496/
>
>    - amforth-upload.py is broken for me, I use the file from 4.0.
>      But I have not bothered to find out exactly what breaks on
>      me/my code.
>
>    - both amforth-upload.py and amforth-shell.py are using
>      "python", which means python2. Since python2 is being
>      discontinued, these should be ported to python3. Anyone
>      interested?
>
>    - The refcard generator is broken probably since release 5.6
>      link to email archive (Martin Nicholas June 2020)
>      https://sourceforge.net/p/amforth/mailman/message/37047630/
>
>
> - Open Questions
>
>    Apart from the code/documentation issues above there are more
>    open questions for me:
>
>    - How do I /reliably/ create the content of the webpage? How do
>      I synchronize my local version effortlessly with the official
>      copy? How can I diagnose changes, when sphinx upon generation
>      changes /every/ file somehow? Did I say I'm not a web person?
>      %^>
>
>    - How do I actually create a new release? Copying the files is
>      one thing, but where do I need to change the version? There
>      is more than one place, I'm afraid. I also happen to know
>      that after 6.9 there cannot be 6.10 due to a limitation
>      created very early. Matthias told me that, otherwise I would
>      be clueless.
>
>    - How to run the testcases? How many test files are there? Can
>      they be run reliably? Will errors show up in such a way that
>      they will not be lost? Where should the test cases go? How
>      about msp430, arm, risc-v? Folks, I break into cold sweat
>      when I work on the source code and hit "commit".
>
>
> - Whacky Ideas
>
>    - git? -- With all the cool kids using git repositories, should
>      I attempt do convert the existing repositories, webpage, etc?
>      does sourceforge.net provide git repositories? Can the
>      existing svn repository be converted on the server side?
>
>    - Should we use a ticket system rather than mailing list?
>
>    - Who of you is using which target controller? Would it be
>      feasible to drop msp430, arm, risc-v in order to simplify the
>      whole thing? yes/no?
>
>    - Can we get rid of the Atmel/Microchip Avrasm Assembler?
>
>      One big difference between the avr8 and the risc-v tree is
>      the assembly language. avr8 is using Atmels assembly. Which
>      is good, because it is thoroughly documented. And which is
>      bad, because there is no working free/libre alternative to
>      avrasm.exe. Yes there is the "avra" project but it has been
>      abandoned long ago. I have been able to assemble AmForth with
>      avra way back in releases 4.2 up until maybe 4.9. I have even
>      contributed a small patch to make atmega644p working.
>      https://sourceforge.net/projects/avra/
>
>      Matthias has contemplated the idea to port AmForth/avr8 to
>      use gnu assembly. He might even have produced a working
>      branch, I don't know.
>
>      For risc-v there is no avr assembly, naturally. That's where
>      all the .s assembly files come into the game.
>
>      I personally would love to have a free/libre assembler for
>      avr assembly. AVRASM.EXE is the only thing that forces me to
>      install wine on my system.
>
>
> - Happy Häcking
>
>    I have been working with AmForth lately. Yes really!
>
>    The Code in my RS485 bus project is showing its age.
>    http://amforth.sourceforge.net/Projects/RS485/RS485Bus.html
>    First, I was able to reduce the assembly part of this game
>    considerably, after Matthias has included a few goodies just
>    for my beloved use case :-) That is working and needs to be
>    documented again.
>
>    Along the way I was bitten by the "because I can" bug and
>    created my own hardware:
>    https://erwaelde.gitlab.io/posts/0005-avr-boards.html
>    Two iterations down the road I do have functional boards.
>    Another board with rs485 and power is needed, but heck, one
>    thing at a time.
>
>    So I have a few controllers distributed about my home. They are
>    taking measurements. There is a collector (perl script)
>    collecting the measurements periodically. The data is going to
>    a sqlite database. The data is viewed using another perl script
>    with a very old extension: pgplot5. This has been working for
>    10 years or more, however, pgplot5 is not being ported to the
>    new worlds of visualization, so a replacement is clearly
>    needed.
>
>    My current plan is to rewrite the collector script, (perl plus
>    EV, AnyEvent, MQTT) let it report the data to a mosquitto
>    daemon. A component called telegraf will subscribe to mosquitto
>    and report all configured messages into a new and shiny influx
>    database. The visualization is currently done with grafana, but
>    I am aiming for R and some javascript component to make it
>    interactive. The results to be shown on a MagicMirror2 info
>    terminal. This is all working in principle, but not yet in the
>    desired detail.
>
>    Yes, yes, there is still a long way to go. But that keeps me
>    out of trouble :-)
>
>
>    That being said, I would love to hear from you, what you are
>    using AmForth for. Show off your projects, even if too small or
>    too unpolished to show anyone else. We will all be kind to each
>    other, promised!
>
>
>
>
>
> One last thing: Matthias was a regular participant in the net2o
> forth chat. I'm there almost every Thursday (20h Germany local
> time). This chat round is open to anyone, however, since the
> technology used resembles a "dark" net ;-) you need to get your
> key "invited". Feel free to join and bother me about how to
> participate, details are here:
> https://fossil.net2o.de/net2o/doc/trunk/wiki/net2o.md
> https://fossil.net2o.de/net2o/doc/trunk/wiki/get-it.md
> https://fossil.net2o.de/net2o/doc/trunk/wiki/try-it.md
>
>
>
> Still reading? Yes?
> That's very kind of you.
> Thank you for your precious time.
>
> I would be very grateful for any comments, ideas, contributions
> from you. I would love to hear what you are using AmForth for.
> Thanks.
>
> I herewith declare the next AmForth Weekend to be on
> 2020-08-01,02, right after "SysAdmin Day".
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysadmin_day
>
>
> Cheers,
> Erich
>
> PS: Halfway through this weekend I can only express deepest
> admiration for Matthias juggling all these pieces so well!
>
>