Re: [colorforth] FML

[Mark Slicker <maslicke@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 8 Feb 2004, Albert van der Horst wrote:

> I see three items here:
> 1. How to keep pace with Chuck Moore
> 2. Having the generating of colorforth under control, such as to
>    have it run on as many PC's as possible
> 3. Allowing everybody to experiment with their own colorforth's
>
> I think I have a tool to go from MASM to NASM format. (I'm a little
> bit surprised that Chuck doesn't use NASM. It is much more "no nonsense".
> It probably boils down to history.)  1]
> I think accomodating GAS is a waste of time, as far as Intel 86 is
> concerned.  The folks that use gas are on gnu-linux systems mostly,
> and NASM is available on most modern distro's.
> (This won't stop anybody from supplying that service though, of
> course! It is just not for me.)

See Peter Appelman's site (http://www.thelma-louise.net/) for a NASM port
of the kernel sources.

I did this GAS port when colorForth was first released. At this time only
the MASM source available. I'm not picky with assemblers and I will be
happy to stop maintenance when colorForth is defined in colorForth.

> > I think this could be very useful to dis-assemble the BIOS...
> I would like to do that. In the context of colorforth this would
> mean, analyzing the BIOS in order to adapt colorforth automatically
> to the PC at hand. All Forth's trying to boot directly would
> benefit from this effort. (Including the one I myself am experimenting
> with ;-) )

I would interested to hear more about this techinique. I've attempted code
analyzers but have left work undone due to the complexity involved.

>
> > Regards
> > Howerd
> Groetjes Albert
>
> 1]
> Actually I go from a "generic" format by macro's to either MASM,
> NASM and GAS, but the latter I didn't try in a long time.
> GAS on Intel can't be used for a traditional Forth, practically.
> I'd end up with a 64 Mbyte executable for my Forth, instead of 30
> Kbyte. (On DEC Alpha it is better.)

I don't understand this. I've produced identical images to Chuck's MASM
compiled source, with the exception of instructions which can be coded in
multiple ways.

Mark

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