FORTH on Arduino -1-

 FORTH on Arduino

Before trying to install a Forth where changing the bootloader is needed i wanted to experiment with Forths that are more 'plug an play'.

First i tried Yaffaforth

After downloading unpacking it tried to compile it. Seemed that it also needed install FreeMemory. After installing this and spending more time than desired it still kept giveing error messages e.g. 'ip' was not declared in this scope .

As in the Yaffaforth information i found on internet a relative old Arduino version is used and the Yaffaforth is also relative old i decided to try stop and try another Forth for Arduino.

Therefore i moved to eforth of Dr. Ting . This Forth compiled without problems on my PC. Also uploading to the Arduino was easy.

The only issue that needed to be fixed was my terminal configuration. In the code i found the baud-rate and i needed to adjust some CR LF settings. It looks great however i did not yet had time to read all documentation to find a solution for the following issues:

- I want to use more IO including I2C within Forth on my Arduino.

- BUILD DOES> that later changed to CREATE DOES> is not available in eforth. I wanted to use this like i used it years on my RCA 1802 computer.

- How to trick the Arduino so it will start a special Forth word if no terminal input is received within a certain time or depending on a High or Low value on an Arduino pin. This to create a simple reconfigurable embedded Forth system.

So i still have a lot to learn and hope to post something about this process on this blog.. eforth seems a great Forth for Arduino. It was easy to install was for me worth the time spend and i want to investigate it further as you also seem to have access to all arduino libraries.