Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!alberta!aunro!atha!lyndon
From: lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: The *ultimate* Forth hardware engine?
Message-ID: <1149@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 9 Oct 89 23:23:27 GMT
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 28

With the recent discussion on Forth implementations in hardware,
I was pleasantly shock the other day while reading through the
_The_SBus_Specification_ manual for the SPARCstation I.

On page 87, the begin to describe the device driver interface to the
SBus. Instead of a machine language interface, they use something
called the "FCode Language." To quote the first paragraph of section
3.4.4:

	"The FCode programming language is closely related to the
	 Forth 83 programming language. FCode is essentially Forth
	 83 with extensions appropriate to its use for device
	 identification and boot drivers. Additionally, FCode has a
	 well-specified binary format, where Forth 83 specifies only
	 the source format. In contrast to Forth 83, FCode is based
	 upon a 32-bit stack width and 32-bit arithmetic."

Appendix B gives an overview of Forth, and provides a sample FCode
driver for a single-bit deep frame buffer.

I think I'll retire cforth now ... :-)


-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
  {alberta,decwrl,lsuc}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA
     "I think every man should have a wife.  You can't blame
         everything on the government."  -- Jed Clampett