Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!duke!phs!anderson@uwvax.ARPA From: anderson@uwvax.ARPA Newsgroups: net.micro.apple Subject: Reviews of The Mill and Micromotion FORTH Message-ID: <1158@uwvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 23-Nov-83 03:40:46 EST Article-I.D.: uwvax.1158 Posted: Wed Nov 23 03:40:46 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 27-Nov-83 03:31:34 EST Lines: 53 Relay-Version:version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site duke.UUCP Posting-Version:version B 2.10 5/3/83; site uwvax.ARPA Path:duke!decvax!harpo!seismo!uwvax!anderson Message-ID:<1158@uwvax.ARPA> Date:Wed, 23-Nov-83 03:40:46 EST Organization:U of Wisconsin CS Dept The following two products for the Apple have been of con- siderable utility to me: 1) Micromotion FORTH This software product is a complete and unified programming environment. It includes its own disk operating system (crude, but easily extensible, as are most well-designed things in FORTH), full-screen editor (full-screen, crude), and FORTH compiler. Everything is memory-resident, and you can get by easily with one disk drive. I believe the system costs around $100 and for another $50 or so you can get floating point support and high-resolution graphics utili- ties, both of which are very complete and fast. FORTH is not, as it stands, a dream language. But the debug cycle is so fast in this system that you end up accomplish- ing things at a far greater rate than you would in most oth- ers. An added advantage is that you have absolute knowledge of the guts of the system. This, for example, enabled me to implemented multi-tasking capability with relative ease. 2) The Mill 6809 coprocessor (made by Stellation Two) This board has a 1 MHz 6809E processor which shares the Apple bus. When the 6809 is running it uses the DMA line to put the 6502 on hold, for about 80% of the memory cycles. The 6502 runs in the 6809's "dead" cycles. So, to some extent, there is true shared-memory multiprocessing. The 6809 can be started and stopped, and either processor can interrupt the other, under software control. You can get 3 different software packages: a PASCAL accelerator, a 6809 macro assembler (which I have, and highly recommend), and the OS/9 operating system. I used the Mill, and an EPROM programmer card, to write mon- itor and BIOS ROMS for a homebrew 6809 system -- it was extremely convenient. Another interesting use would be as a dual-processor FORTH machine; using a table mechanism, one copy of each FORTH word would suffice. If anyone does or has done something interesting with these or other Apple goodies, please mail me. uwvax!anderson (David Anderson)