[colorforth] Experiments and troubles with colorForth 1.0

["Michael A. Losh" <forthist@xxxxxxxx>]

I downloaded COLOR.COM (stamped "cmcf 1.0" in bytes 3 to 10) and tried
running it on some PCs.  Here are some details and results so far...

[1] Generic Pentium II 333 MHz, ASUS P2L97 mobo. with Intel LX chipset
(AGP), LeadTek Permedia 2 (8 MB) AGP video adapter.
Results: Running COLOR.COM in DOS (also FreeDOS) goes dark, and typing SAVE
(;a/d [space]) turns on the floppy light, but no data seems to be written to
the disk.

[2] Same PC as [1], wrote COLOR.COM to diskette using DEBUG as instructed on
the colorForth website.  When rebooting, the PC hangs at the point it reads
and executes the floppy.  The display is still in text mode, and I still see
the BIOS informtion normally seen during the boot.  The text cursor is
flashing and the floppy light is on, but the system seems unresponsive.
Trying to execute the SAVE command blindly does not cause any floppy
activitiy that I can dedect.

QUESTION: before running the DEBUG command to write COLOR.COM to a diskette,
should I first run SYS from DOS to mark it bootable?  I assume that
COLOR.COM is totally self-contained.

[3] Dell 4100 (? I think.. I'm not in front of it right now) Pentium III
800+ MHZ PC, unknown mobo & chipset (until I can look it up tomorrow). I
think it has an ATI video adapter.  COLOR.COM from FreeDOS opens in graphics
mode with the colorForth logo and UI and the keyboard works!  The SAVE
command turns on the floppy light, but it does not appear to actually
transfer any data to the diskette (I could still read it as a normal DOS
diskette).  I was able to add two numbers together on the stack (baby-steps)
but I did not try much else.  I didn't try the editor yet to browse the
colorForth source code.

[4] Generic AMD K6-2 450 MHz PC, Via chipset motherboard, (I think AGP-type)
Blade 3D video adapter.  COLOR.COM from DOS gives same results as [1].

Tomorrow I'll probably try the DEBUG-prepared diskette on the Dell PC [3]
and the AMD K6-2 PC [4] to see how it boots colorForth directly.  I should
be able to post the mobo and graphics details for that PC too.

Note: I used FreeDOS on the [3] and [4] PCs because they now have
Windows2000 which does not have a direct "Restart in MS-DOS mode" option.  I
think someone on comp.lang.forth suggested FreeDOS as an option if you don't
have MS-DOS anymore.  Any other suggestions would be appreciated.
--
Mike Losh        http://members.home.net/forthist/

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