Discussion
Still thinking about extremely resource limited computing.
And general purpose computing at that too.
My previous explorations have taught me that you can have quite a nice time with about 8K RAM.
On the arduino mega, for instance, you have about 5K free user program space after loading Tiny BASIC.
BASIC remains on the menu, of course, despite its negative reputation. Lisp and FORTH are both live options as well.
@amca @dirtycommo Forth really needs 8KB for the system itself; one can fit a Tiny BASIC into 2KB with ease, but a Forth in 2KB would be very limited - a real adventure in minimalism
that said, Itsy packs a surprising amount of Forth into 1KB: https://github.com/kt97679/itsy-linux
@millihertz @amca yo yo! sorry it took me so long to get around to responding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Ace
not sure if you have seen this, but it is possible to do a FORTH microcomputer with 1KB of RAM.
the benefit of using FORTH is that you can store large amounts of dictionary words in ROM, whereas in BASIC you usually put the whole user program into RAM.
i only have 500 chars on this instance.
would love to discuss further--?
@dirtycommo @amca true, if you have 8KB ROM you can make do with a good bit less RAM (indeed, the ZX81/TS1000 had Tree4th, a somehwat unconventional subroutine threaded Forth in 8KB ROM, though it did need at least 2KB RAM; EightyOne runs it rather slowly, but i'm not aware of any other emulator that can). but your original post mention 8KB RAM, and didn't say anything about ROM; with no ROM, such a system is either going to be somewhat constrained, or very short on program space
the problem with an ACE-style home computer system is the lack of a disk drive - or more generally, random access storage. if you have that, you can use blocks to store source code, and you only really need a buffer or two to have a full environment (with, in effect, a 26-bit virtual memory space); if you don't, you have to store both the source code, and the result of its compilation, in RAM at the same time. what makes the ACE unique is that it obviated this by essentially making threaded code double as tokenised source code; for a more modern contrast, colorForth goes the other way, by turning source code into a kind of token threaded code (and by minimising the amount of compiled code that ever exists at once)
@millihertz @dirtycommo Have you heard of SectorForth (and SectorLisp)?
@dirtycommo What type of use cases have you seen or are you thinking of?
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@dirtycommo Am I wrong, or would #Forth be a more effective use of 8K than Basic?