[ColorForth] Toys (was USB and other serial bit boffing)

[Jack Johnson <fragment@xxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Myron Plichota wrote:
> I cherish the notion that someday I will be running a simple but powerful 
> "toy" computer with the best ideas we have seen implemented, but with a 
> simple, consistent, efficient, and direct interface to the hardware and base 
> software. Jeff's stories about single afternoon MachineForth orientation 

[...]

> What this world needs is a good $500 "toy" workstation-class Forth computer 
> that preserves the elegant simplicity of the well-recognized niche of 
> embedded Forth systems. To hell with "me too" reliance on off the shelf 
> hardware. It is here today, gone tomorrow. Forget USB, PCI, FireWire etc. 
> Think fibre optics or LVDS ring instead for peripheral and multiprocessor 
> interfacing.
> 
> The axiom "never re-invent the wheel" is seductive, misleading, and 
> hypocritical: the PC industry does it continuously and then presents us with 
> the new world order! We wind up trying to cope with _someone else's_ wheel 
> complete with broken spokes and eccentricity when it would be so much simpler 
> to turn our own wheels on lathes that we also built ourselves.

When I first saw the uClinux project ( http://www.uclinux.org/ ) I started
thinking about an open specificiation palmtop computer based on the
uClinux SIMM, something with an Ethernet jack, a 1/4 VGA monochrome
screen, a one-finger keyboard and a SIMM slot that housed the processor,
RAM and ROM.  Want to run PalmOS on it?  Toss in a different SIMM.  Need
more horsepower?  Always wanted an Apple IIe in your pocket?  Same
platform, different SIMM.

Would it be useful?  Doubtful.  Would it be fun?  Definitely!  People from
the Linux camp could share hardware info with the Squeak people and even
WinCE could play if they wanted to.  You could use it as a router or
packet sniffer in an emergency.  It would be cheap, you could program
in an airplane or on the couch, and it would fit the bill for all of us
who want something simple without being completely useless.

We definitely need a toy platform (toy in the good sense!) to bring back
the experimentation that used to be so prevalent, and yes, to work on a
wheel whose spokes don't come pre-bent.

-Jack

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