On Thu, Jun 21, 2018, at 6:39 AM, Kurt H Maier wrote: > On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 10:35:42PM +0100, Ethan A. Gardener wrote: > > > > a sort of operating system where the primary interface to all tasks is > > a Forth interpreter. > > I think we've talked about this in another venue some years back, but I > often thing of the OpenFirmware implementation used by the OLPC XO-1 > laptop. Instead of a BIOS or UEFI or linux trash in their stead, the > system was managed by an OpenFirmware installation, much of which was > written in Forth, and whose primary interface was a Forth shell. This > environment had complete access to the hardware of the system, which > was used by the project to create really comprehensive hardware > diagnostics tools.
I do too. My Mac just boots to OpenFirmware now. It's a bit broken, being early Apple OFw, but that was what prompted me to start work -- it needs a text editor. OFw is an ANS Forth, and I'm working with the goal of running on multiple such ANS Forth platforms. > > I mostly used it for screwing around, but it was fairly complete; it > supported the wifi hardware and the webcam, and I often thought I'd like > a computer that just booted into this environment and stayed there. I'm > glad to hear you're still experimenting along these lines. Thanks! > There's a > lot of value in a system whose primary interface is the programming > environment. I work with computers because of the Commodore VIC-20... > and I wonder if I'd have ever given a damn about the field if my first > exposure to computers involved a Modern User Experience. I haven't stopped to wonder exactly that, but I think I would have hated them. I was brought up on the idea that computers existed to be programmed, so I wasn't happy when Windows shipped without a programming language outside the DOS prompt, or later at all. I might have gone hunting for "a real computer"! :) It also took me years to get used to the mouse, and longer to get used to menus. It probably didn't help that I didn't have a decent desk for my first Atari ST, and GEM is *terrible!* Anyway, I love this quote: > Then I discovered girls and cars and didn't get back into computers until the > early 90s only to discover that there was no longer a computer that was > READY> in 1.2 seconds and would only do exactly what it was told exactly when > it was told as fast as it could...Nope, by then the spinning hourglass had > been invented and the world has been riveted to their not-as-big-as-a-tv > screen, the scowl lines of struggle on their foreheads, one hand tied to a > mouse, the other fingers tapping...but conflict obviously was what America > needed [...] It's in the comments here: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/collection/atari-400.htm That 1.2 seconds was the time it took an Atari 400 to check for a disk drive. Windows 7 takes about 50 times as long to 'install' a USB keyboard! It's not even like Atari's peripheral bus was overly simple; it supported almost all peripherals with a common protocol, so I think of it as an early USB. -- The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer
