80188-based FORTH Computer Vesta OEM-188 aka "Radio Electronics RE Robot Brain"
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- Опубліковано 15 лип 2024
- While working on my recent 80186 CPU Board project, I came across an eBay listing for the Vesta Technologies OEM-188 single board computer, which is based on the 80188, and it even has the FORTH programming language in ROM. Will it even boot MS-DOS with a serial console? Let's find out. This board was also featured as part of a series of articles in Radio Electronics Magazine back in 1987. This board was the "brain" for the Radio Electronics RE Robot. Unfortunately, I don't have the robot itself, but at least you can get a good demo of how the CPU board for it worked. For more vintage computer videos, see www.smbaker.com/.
- Наука та технологія
Mom got a job at a college and during the summer I’d go with her and just hang out at the library all day. I read their entire collection of RE, and saved my nickels to photocopy the good articles
Never stop making videos
RE was my bible.
Never paid much attention to FORTH but seeing your video today has changed my mind and I think I will have a play with FORTH, thanks for sharing your hard work.
FORTH is quite amazing. I don't know if I'd like to have to program a professional system in it today... but it's just so amazing that it achieves so much using so little. It's byword seems to be "we don't bother with all of that, our way is much simpler" and that is quite refreshing.
If you want to learn Forth, look into something called "Jonesforth" where you can learn the language and how to write the interpreter/compiler at exactly the same time. As part of another project, I implement a Jonesforth port for the 8008 CPU. Not all that much to it.
@@smbakeryt Okay thanks
Wow. I have 2 80188 JDEC ceramic chips with the gold fingers. I started to hand wire the CPU board on a S100 solder pad. I think I still have the Hellorld code on a EEPROM. Inspired.
Hmmm... That looks like a really really interesting board.
I had a bunch of 80186s back in the day and the fact they even existed came as quite a surprise because they didn't find their way into any (many?) desktop PCs.
And then it's a FORTH system. I was massively into FORTH back in the 80s so any FORTH system I see gives me the warm fuzzies.
... I had a Jupiter Ace back in the day... I used to love going to the computer club and showing off programming in something that wasn't BASIC.
So cool
i be leave i have all those issues for the RE robot. I remember reading about it in my radio electronics magazines.
Oh man I always wanted to build the R-E robot. Never had the funds back then, and don't have the time now :(
RE. Yea.
I remember these series of articles - did anyone build one of the robots?
I've been trying to wrap my head around the whole latches and buffers for quite some time. Could you tell me which ones of your videos you go over those? If not, perhaps you have some resources or links where I could learn about that? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Does the FORTH for the 80188 use the multiply and divide instructions of which there are many also there is a mode that means that you have to be in the zero ring to have access the hardware and the other rings are possibly user rings.
The slowness is in updating the screen at what appears to be 1200 baud modem speed - if that. All the time is taken drawing the screen including blank characters. With an addressable screen driver that would go much faster.
It's actually 9600 baud, so it can refresh the screen (16x64 = 1200 characters) in about 1.2 seconds. It does look like it's slow when I'm cutting and pasting the Forth code into the window because I've added some extra delay -- I have no flow control setup, so I delayed the characters while pasting to prevent serial buffer overrun. The 'gen' word takes around 4 seconds, so that gives us about 5 seconds between generations. So you're right, we could optimize out 20-25% by improving the display update.
Interesting... Recently got some 8" polyFORTH disks in that I archived. Not knowledgeable in FORTH/polyFORTH though.
Hi Scott, I sent you an email. Ron from Sydney.
Thanks Ron... I probably should have been clearer in the video -- I do have all the Radio Electronics issues from 1987. I'm trying to find materials in addition to those magazines.
Dump DOS, FORTH rulz.
Very under rated OS.