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Multi-platform development
The title of this article is perhaps a bit misleading: it’s not just about developing code which needs to run on different platforms, it’s also about using different programming languages.Over the...
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Meet the new RF73 driver
There’s a new wireless radio driver in town for the JeeNode Zero and other µC boards running Mecrisp Forth. It’s called RF73 but it is in fact intended to be used with the RFM70, RFM73, and RFM75....
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Interactive Forth over RF?
Since Mecrisp Forth uses the serial port as its interactive console, the most direct way of connecting to a µC board is as follows (double-line arrows represent wired connections):When using some...
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Redesigning the JET model
The JET project (JeeLabs Embello Toolkit) is the continuation of the earlier HouseMon project (in turn the successor of JeeBus). It’s been a slow starter, but definitely not shelved. The JET “Hub” has...
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Turning JET into a live system
The previous article about the redesigned JET model mentioned Folie as sitting between a USB interface and MQTT, presumably to publish received RF messages on MQTT, and to subscribe to an MQTT topic so...
View ArticleWe'll need a BIOS for CP/M
Theminbios.z80 code used so far only has the minimal functionality needed to get CP/M off the ground. Well… slightly more, to be precise: it can see 256 KB of RAM as virtual disk A: and 256 KB of flash...
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A µSD, slave SPI, and DMA
Connecting an SD card to a Blue Pill was described in a recent article. With thesdcard.fs code, it’s as simple as calling sd-init, and then sd-read / sd-write for accessing 512-byte blocks.And since...
View ArticleThe virtual floppy jukebox
Times sure have changed: a fingernail-sized 2 GB µSD card of a few dollars can now easily store over a thousand 1.44 MB floppy disk images, while being quicker than the fastest hard drive from the...
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The limits of Mac and Mouse
It all started with recent kernel panics on my MacBook Pro laptop, almostevery night, causing me to revisit my setup and choice of technologies. For the record: I’m very attached to my 2014-era “MBP”,...
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Why Vim is very different
Ah, the smell of editor wars. Arguments collide. Opinions galore. Lots of heat, so little light…This article was not written for the sake of argument. I just want to highlight why I keep coming back to...
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Taking it further with i3
This article is about the i3 window manager (and also, further down below, Ranger):Its main distinguishing feature is that is usestiling as visual layout mechanism.While the mouse and...
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EZ-Retro v2, now with a PCB
As mentioned earlier, theEZ-Retro project could use a PCB for a more compact and robust setup. There is a nice F103 board variant (search for “STM32F103C8T6 ARM Minisystem Development Board STM32“ on...
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Troubleshooting the EZ-Retro
Here is the eZ80 chip, hand-soldered on the new EZ-Retro v2 PCB:The trouble is: something is very wrong: with my lab power supply set to 3.3V and a 30 mA maximum current limit, the voltage drops to...
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Mecrisp Forth's memory use
The Blue Pill is a widely available and extremely low-cost STM32F103-based µC board which has an amazing amount of features and plenty of memory onboard: 64K flash and 20K RAM.In C/C++, the way...
View ArticleFolie is growing up... slowly
Folie, the “Forth Live Explorer” is starting to shape up. Here’s a summary of what it’s about:a front end for Mecrisp Forth, i.e. a terminal emulator likepicocom or Tera Termeasily find (ctrl-R) and...
View ArticleF103 + USB = Swiss Army Knife
The USB driver for STM32F103 has been around for months and it’s proving to be very stable and usable. The current Mecrisp release nowincludes it, and there’s an F303 port available.The original code...
View ArticleSimple Mecrisp Forth utilities
The default message shown after a reset of Mecrisp Forth is this prompt:Mecrisp-Stellaris RA 2.3.6 for STM32F103 by Matthias KochNothing else, no hint that you can start entering commands. With a...
View ArticleLet's trace, profile, and patch
Although Mecrisp Forth “compiles” source code to machine language, it’s not really a compiler in the traditional sense, as with say C or C++. In Forth, the compilation process and runtime execution are...
View ArticleGenerated code & performance
Let’s look at how the tricks in the previous article end up in code, and their performance effects. First thetrace.fs utility, which needs to insert special calls at the start and end of each word:: a...
View ArticleThink, upload, rinse, repeat
As often mentioned, Forth enables an interactive development approach: you enter commands on the µC itself, and things get done right away. No make, no compile step, no uploads.But that’s an...
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