Re: [colorforth] blocks and corrupted floppies

["Ray St. Marie" <ray.stmarie@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Roger, and the "LIST" :-)

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005 14:47:55 -0500, rlevy <rlevy@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> My name's Roger, and I'm a 21 year old hobbyist programmer going to school in
> Baltimore, MD. My current project is learning colorForth with the goal of
> creating arcade games.

Hi Roger, I'm Ray St. Marie, a 41 year old hobbiest programmer from
Forth Wort, Texas :-)
oops that's Fort Worth. That's a very worthy goal you have.

> ( Hopefully most people read this one first ... :) Sorry, i noticed in my
> last message that i didn't even introduce myself, and i thought well it was
> my first message here so that was kind of gauche... )

Not a problem. :-)  I'm very glad to make your aquaintence and glad to
learn of your interest.

> I know that thinking critically about ColorForth and what improvements can be
> made is probably on noone's mind, with the recent lawsuit Chuck is involved
> in. 

Well, i don't think this list is a true reflection of the interest
about the improvements
that can be made. 

> i also noticed that not many ideas are being bounced back and forth
> publically. 

They are, but in Internet Relay Chat. I'll say more about that below.

> but I was just concerned about the system because in my primary
> getting-aquainted-with doings, and i've really just only started 2 days ago 

 WOW!! thats what I'm impressed with. So many were having trouble
getting started.
I guess this speaks to the accumulation of excellent information on
the web of late.

> (but i am absolutely hooked now), 

Ya, me too :-)

> i've found myself continually "patching"
> corrupted colorforth floppies, due to a byte getting written here or there
> into the wrong spot. i know it may be my fault, for want of experience and
> understanding all the ins and outs, but i was wondering if people continue to
> have this problem even after lots of time and if it is why Chuck has
> suggested the use of a "round-robin" system of floppies, a kind of analog
> GoBack. it sounds like a sure bet to protect oneself against losing all their
> work but i imagine that it could lead to confusion, say if you make the
> mistake of writing to them out-of-order or simply forget to save a working
> copy before continuing.

While developing, I use three disks and backups stored in Windows, 
BUT, I'm all for a better way.

> I thought that maybe the problem could be softened by changing (or
> extending?) the system to only save changed blocks to disk. then if the core
> software is disturbed while working, it won't be a problem next time you boot
> up, saving the trouble of finding the newest working save or patching the
> floppy from Windows. i think that first i need a word to save a random block
> to disk (even past the original 162-block boundary) and then one in the root
> block to save whatever i'm currently working on and only that. should save
> some headaches. and time waiting for the disk. but it's not perfect. maybe
> patching corrupted disks isn't the bother that could be made possible by
> forgetting to update my custom save word. wow, these are real issues. one of
> the things i love most about working in this new platform is i l so
> RESPONSIBLE for myself. what a remarkable change from working in a sea of
> rules and complexity that i was in before ...
> 
> so, jumping back, i wanted to know if other people have had the same troubles
> and how they deal with it.

Yes, sir. We are all haveing those very same issues. 

> Roger

Tim Neitz ( Developer of Muti-Tasking ColorForth mtcf )  and I (
c4thchess and several other things ) would like to extend to you and
any one else reading this, an invitation to the Internet Relay Chat
session that goes on constantly at #c4th-ot.

If you have no experiance with IRC- respond to this e-mail and I will
personnally help get you started. The chat is international ( tho the
language is English) and manned most every hour of most every day.

My pleasure to make your aquaintence and hope to see you at the #c4th-ot. 

-- 
Ray St. Marie
Rastm2 At users dot sourceforge dot net
Ray.StMarie AT gmail DOT com
Ray.StMarie AT sbcglobal DOT com
Raystm2 in  irc.freenode.net /join #c4th #c4th-ot #forth #retro

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