Clik here to view.
J1: a small, fast, CPU core for FPGA
[James Bowman] of the Willow Garage published a paper on his J1 CPU core for field-programmable gate arrays. This was originally developed and used for the Ethernet cameras on the PR2 (you know, that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rekindling Forth with a Propeller Jupiter Ace
The Jupiter Ace was a small membrane keyboard, cassette tape drive computer akin to the ZX Spectrum released in 1982. Priced at £90, it was a little more expensive than its home computer...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A simple Forth development board
Forth is a very interesting programming language. It’s very flexible and is extremely efficient on low powered hardware, but unfortunately not very popular simply due to the fact that it’s not very...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hacklet 38 – 6502 Projects
The 6502 CPU is probably the most famous of all the 8-bit processors out there, whether in the form of bare chips for homebrew computers, or as slightly modified derivative chips found in everything...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Open Source FPGA Toolchain Builds CPU
When you develop software, you need some kind of toolchain. For example, to develop for an ARM processor, you need a suitable C compiler, a linker, a library, and a programmer. FPGAs use a similar set...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Go Forth on a Breadboard
Forth isn’t a shiny new programming language, but it has a staunch following because it is lightweight and elegant. The brainchild of [Chuck Moore], the language is deceptively simple. Words are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Upgrade Your Computer the 1985 Way
Today when you want to upgrade your computer you slap in a card, back in the early 80’s things were not always as simple. When [Carsten] was digging around the house he found his old, and heavily...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No Pascal, not a SNOBOL’s chance. Go Forth!
My article on Fortran, This is Not Your Father’s FORTRAN, brought back a lot of memories about the language. It also reminded me of other languages from my time at college and shortly thereafter, say...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interactive ESP8266 Development with PunyForth
Forth is one of those interesting languages that has a cult-like following. If you’ve never looked into it, its strength is that it is dead simple to put on most CPUs, yet it is very powerful and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Browsing Forth
Forth has a strong following among embedded developers. There are a couple of reasons for that. Almost any computer can run Forth, even very small CPUs that would be a poor candidate for running...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Forth: The Hacker’s Language
Let’s start right off with a controversial claim: Forth is the hacker’s programming language. Coding in Forth is a little bit like writing assembly language, interactively, for a strange CPU...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hacking on the Weirdest ESP Module
Sometimes I see a component that’s bizarre enough that I buy it just to see if I can actually do something with it. That’s the case with today’s example, the ESP-14. At first glance, you’d ask yourself...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Moving Forth with Mecrisp-Stellaris and Embello
In the last episode, I advocated a little bit for Forth on microcontrollers being a still-viable development platform, not just for industry where it’s usually seen these days, but also for hackers. I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Making a Solar-Cell Tester With Mecrisp-Stellaris Forth
In the last two articles on Forth, I’ve ranted about how it’s beautiful but strange, and then gotten you set up on a basic system and blinked some LEDs. And while I’ve pointed you at the multitasker,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hacking an Inspection Microscope
Sometimes I need to be able to take photographs of very small things, and the so-called macro mode on my point-and-shoot camera just won’t cut it. And it never hurts to have an inspection scope on hand...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Take the Blue Pill and Go Forth
Forth has a long history of being a popular hacker language. It is simple to bootstrap. It is expressive. It can be a very powerful system. [jephthal] took the excellent Mecrisp Forth and put it on the...
View ArticleForth System-On-Chip Takes Us Back to the 80s
For anyone who has dealt with the programming language Forth, odds are good that you picked it up back in the 80s. Since the language is still in use for many applications, though, you might not have...
View ArticleForth Version 1 Runs Again
Some people love Forth and some people hate it. However, you usually think of Forth as something running on a little computer such as an 8-bit microcomputer. When [Chuck Moore] developed the system...
View ArticleWeb Pages Via Forth
Forth. You either love it or you hate it. If you have struggled to work on tiny microcontrollers, you probably are in the first camp. After all, bringing up a minimal Forth system is pretty simple and...
View ArticlePocket Forth Invades Your TI Calculator
TI certainly have certainly seen off rivals such as HP or Casio to capture the lion’s share of the calculator market. The TI-84 is a real staple, and with as many units as there are out there, hacking...
View Article