The Sinclair QL Forum

Computer One Forth (on the QL)
by
Oleander Nerium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT3PJJPm6dc
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BASIC Compiler for the Sinclair QL: SuperCharge
by
8-Bit Retro Journal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nsfSjVfBA0

That's a cool copy of Forth. It sounds like it's not one we can find freely available though.

This weekend I went down the rabbit hole of playing with MCODER2, the BASIC compiler for the ZX81. It's a pretty neat program and I'm impressed it can parse and compile most of BASIC with its tiny 4K footprint. Anyone have any experience with it?

The one pain that I haven't figured out yet is how to get around its 16K limit. I got countless advise about poking RAMTOP (16389) and that would take care of it, but neither the latest EightyOne nor sz81 emulators would work on any program bigger than 4K. So I took my BASIC Elite game that I wrote as a demo for my ZXSimulator, which was 8K in size, and teased out all the graphics and made them separate MC routines and got the beast to compile and run. I had to compile 11 different chunks in sequence (reminded me of how C is done).

The compiled game is not a complete copy since I need to figure out how to pass information between the separate MC routines so I can pass along how many points it ends with, and what keys are being configured, but works mostly like its BASIC equivalent. Next I plan to disassemble it to see what the MCODER2 is doing.

Just for fun since its easy enough to crank the speed on the EightyOne emulator up to about 8x to get the same feel--or run the ZXSimulator on my Q68 and BASIC will fly (it even runs faster on the web version if you have a new, fast machine). If any one is interested (plus I literally spent the entire weekend learning how to do this), here is the zip file of the two .p files (the MC version and the original BASIC version).

Hi There,
I'm the guy who did the Computer One Forth clip on YouTube...
Indeed it is not, strictly speaking available freely, in the PD
I intend to show other Retro-Forth systems including SuperForth for QL

Hi

Just watched your Forth vids, very well done.

I dabble in Forth, but would not say I am proficient in Forth programming, I like to try.

Hi all,

Pandoraefretum wrote:Hi There,
I'm the guy who did the Computer One Forth clip on YouTube...
Indeed it is not, strictly speaking available freely, in the PD
I intend to show other Retro-Forth systems including SuperForth for QL

By the way, I am the one who discovered the bugs in Computer One Forth and after correcting them and trying to contact ComputerOne about them a long time ago, finally posted my patch here :

https://www.theqlforum.com/viewtopic.php ... forth#p804

The version that I bought was 2.0 BUT in your video, the version is said to be 3.0 only in page 0 of the default FORTH_SCR file, not in the banner of the starting display.

When I patched the bugs, I also changed the colors and banner of this starting display, that I found awful (here in mode 8) :
Let me add that the examples of code that you show in your video do not (IMO) do justice to FORTH, and especially to ComputerOne FORTH if compared with DP SupperForth.

In this other thread about my FORTH experience :

https://www.theqlforum.com/viewtopic.php ... ata#p36253

I will show a program that I developped to teach how to code (in FORTH ) to 8 years old children ( the class of my daughter).
To be seen soon !