[colorforth] How I got colorforth to boot. part one

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

Ray here, Sorry I had to split this into two parts. It's just too big
a text file for the mailinglist software...

Hi all, Ray here,

I promissed that I would post the process I used to get ColorForth (
original version ) to boot and display on an off the shelf, pentium 4.

It is my hope that others will find this process helpful when trying
to mate colorforth to a machine. For the less initiated, this is how
you get colorforth to work!

It has been a goal of this mailinglist and it's members, to provide a
listing of all know hardware, and all know colorforth changes to run
on that hardware. I will gladly make a list onto my colorforth.info
site, if you folks will e-mail this mailing list with your hardware
and changes.

Colorforth, scratch that itch!
Many programs are written to solve a tinsy problem that the programmer
seems to keep running into. In the case of colorForth, Chuck Moore
wanted to make scripting his sourceless programming of his "OKAD" --
custom chip cad software, just a bit more convienient. A Forth is
borne.

Colorforth needs to be customized to run on your computer hardware, in
most cases. This is a necessity due to the fact that colorforth is not
an all-hardware-encompasing OS like a Windows or a *nix. It's
extreamly minimal. Just the basic drivers for a basic set of hardware
is provided. For that matter, the original version is customized to
run on the hardware that Chuck Moore had when he wrote it. Others,
like Terry Loveall, Howerd Oakford, Mark Slicker, Tim Neitz, and Peter
Appelman, have written native colorforths to run on thier own
hardware.

I'm not yet competent to write a native colorforth, so I have to use
other methods to get colorforth up and running.

Best idea i've read yet, to get colorForth running...
If you have a couple hundred dollars to do this...
1) find several colorforths on the web
2) make a disk of each and take them to computer stores
3) test each image in the machines there, keeping in mind that if it
boots but doesn't display, you will most likely be able to hack the
display settings when you get the machine home.


I tried this method in May of 2003.
I did have a few hundred dollars, and I was able to find a machine
that appeared to boot the image. I could tell this fact, as the floppy
light went out, and when I typed 'boot' blindly, it seemed to cycle
the boot process. So I tried 'save', and the light came on, and after
a moment went back out. I asumed that the software was working, just
not displaying. I took a chance and bought a Compaq/HP Presario model
sr1010nx, for about $500 USD. This machine is a pentium 4, and as far
as I knew, this was the first time colorforth had run on a Compaq or a
pentium 4 chip.

It is worthy to note at this point that...
The big computer distribution companies, such as HP/Compaq, DELL,
Gateway, use some proprietary software and hardware configurations
that could make it impossible to run colorforth natively. It has been
suggested that generic pentium computers have an easier time getting
colorforth to run.

Below is the file I wrote, right on top of Terry Loveall's readme.txt
for his version of colorforth.
It contains the process I used to get up and running.

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