Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ndsuvax!ncoverby
From: ncoverby@ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Novix chip with Computer Cowboys software by Calvin Moore
Message-ID: <888@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Date: 14 May 88 19:56:00 GMT
References: <17430@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <460@ghidrah.tessi.UUCP>
Organization: Silo Tech, Fargo ND
Lines: 52

In article  <460@ghidrah.tessi.UUCP> bobl@tessi.UUCP (Bob Lewis) writes:
>In article <17430@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes:
>>      I just saw the Novix chip running under the control of the silliest
>>user interface I have ever encountered.  This thing has a programmer-oriented
>>interface based on three (3) buttons and a color CRT.  No keyboard.  The

Heck, even microwave ovens have more of a keyboard than this. 

I'd also like to know what the intended market for this product is.

>There has been at least one other low-bandwidth FORTH system that I can
>think of, the Rockwell AIM 65.  It was designed for low cost industrial
>control applications.  It didn't look like it was a whole lot of fun to
>develop on, but at least it had a keyboard!  Its weakness was a single-line
>40(?)-character display, although I think a serial interface was an option.
>(Aside: Anybody seen one of these things lately?)

I see one of these antiques every day.  It's collecting dust (rather than
data) next to my S-100 "boat anchor" and PC Clone.  The AIM was the first
computer I had that I could really call a computer.  It wasn't a very good
development tool, but it was much better than the KIM or SYM (apparently it's
targeted compeditors).  The display is 20-columns wide and so is the printer.
It has a 20MA serial interface (all software driven) standard feature which I
quickly hooked to a terminal. 

AIM-FORTH is a take-off of FIG-FORTH with support for the AIM's I/O and
was ROMable (they copied the USER page into RAM on cold start, and had lots
of execution vectors in the USER page).  It also had support for interrupts
inside of NEXT (obviously, I spent loads of time disassembling this beast)
which was rather slick.  Rockwell also produced a floating-point math package
which hooked into their Forth quite well.  It provided primitive floating
point operations plus some trig functions and I/O conversion.  I used the
primitives to impliment a full floating-point stack (separate from the
integer stack).

More recently, Rockwell came out with the R65F11 and R65F12 which are single-
chip Forth systems.  They contain the Forth kernel in ROM, along with some
I/O stuff.  To do development with them, you need another set of ROMS which
contain the Forth compiler and other such stuff.

I've implimented one simple data collection system here at NDSU with an AIM,
and it performed quite well until being replaced with an IBM PC.  I found
the PC to be harder to hook into than the AIM.

I got a letter a few years ago from a company called DYNACORP (I think) who
said they had bought the AIM products from Rockwell and were going to continue
to support them.

-- 
Glen Overby
Bitnet:  ncoverby@ndsuvax
UUCP: {uunet, ihnp4!umn-cs}!ndsuvax!ncoverby