2018 is the time to celebrate 50 Years of Forth. This year in September is as well EuroForth 2018 - where the Forth specialists meet, this time at the river of Forth in Scotland. The inventor of Forth, Chuck Moore, has been invited to attend, and he promised he will be there. And he was there.I started the Forth Bookshelf 5 years ago. It has now - including this book - grown to 20 books altogether. First published as eBook for cost reasons and no delivery cost. But many people want to hold the print book in their hands, so ...
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2018 is the time to celebrate 50 Years of Forth. This year in September is as well EuroForth 2018 - where the Forth specialists meet, this time at the river of Forth in Scotland. The inventor of Forth, Chuck Moore, has been invited to attend, and he promised he will be there. And he was there.I started the Forth Bookshelf 5 years ago. It has now - including this book - grown to 20 books altogether. First published as eBook for cost reasons and no delivery cost. But many people want to hold the print book in their hands, so this year I started converting, and 6 books are available now as print book now as well - with more to come over the next couple of months.I stumbled by chance over this project of Georg Heinrichs, when I was looking for a Forth for the small Microchip Attiny 2313. There really is a small Forth implementation with the whole Forth on the chip - but not tried it yetThe 2313 has it's limitations: with just 2k of Flash.But on the positive there is a 20 pin DIL-package. So very breadboard friendly. Easy PCB to make if needed.There are smaller packages, if you can deal with it. But there was another reason for me as well: There is one other book on the Forth Bookshelf - the Sparrow; where there is no Forth implementation yet, as it uses the Attiny13, which is even smaller with its 8 pin DIL package - and 1k FLASH.BUT SPARROW can be programmed over the internet - no PC, no special software, no programmer required, just your mobile phone/PC, and this chip could be probably used as a target for this MikroForth as well. Still to be tested.Back to this MikroForth project here now: I contacted Georg and started with a first translation, as his German version would be a bit difficult to digest for a worldwide audience. He agreed to the translation. We started a Wiki page on the German Forth group website, and there is much of this available now for download and print at https: //wiki.forth-ev.de/doku.php/attiny . More to be added as there is time.I do like the approach that Georg took and he kindly agreed that I can convert his information into an eBook - and later then as well as print book as part of Forth Bookshelf at https: //... with a 2313 chip, a resistor and a capacitor - plus a USBtoTTL converter can get going as the software runs on the PC and generates a hex file for programming .Georg offers as well chips with a Bootloader programmed in already: You can find his website at http: //... complete kit of parts including the PCB - as shown on the cover page.And as well a pre-programmed chip 2313 with a bootloader already programmed in.There is as well a blog in German at http: //... the project can be built using a solderless breadboard as well.Or some other options I tried out and documented here in addition.One of the points important to me ist to have a system in a box including batteries, so you can run an application without problems - and in an enclosure which is probably available worldwide - I often use a TicTac Box as we needed a low-cost enclosure for the MicroBox project..I tried tis out to ensure it all works. But just take it as example and find your own way.Enjoy the eBook - a print version is planned and will be available some time in 2018/19, depending on interest.I took the decision to make this documentation available as a combined version in English for the non-German world, but to keep as well Georgs original in German - rather than publishing two separate items.I am planning to have this eBook available on amazon around EuroForth (12th of September ) so there might have to be a preliminary version.We hope you enjoy this eBook - and please leave a bit of feedback at amazon, so other readers can use your feedback as guidance. I am often asked why Forth - there is Python, C, and many other languages. But I like Forth
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