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The BIOS in old Sun machined used to run some kind of Forth interpreter which would run code from your expansion cards to initialize them (not sure if that was
by Erwin 13y ago
The BIOS in old Sun machined used to run some kind of Forth interpreter which would run code from your expansion cards to initialize them (not sure if that was meant to make this cross-platform/cross-architecture).
I vaguely recall trying to get an old SPARCstation to boot and figuring out how to work the Forth shell (which is similar to what Grub is now) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware
That was one of the first "small factor" pizza box machines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_box_form_factor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_box_form_factor
- mikeash 13y agoMacs used this for years as well. You could boot into the Forth interpreter and do interesting things. Amusingly, many of the older models with Open Firmware had no display drivers in the interpreter, so while you could start it, you had to talk to it through a serial port rather than using your keyboard and screen.
- chc 13y agoIIRC it was still in use right up until they switched to Intel processors. I never realized that was Forth!
- trurl42 13y agoThe newer models had display drivers. You could write write small graphical programs for them, like an animated version of the Towers of Hanoi: http://www.kernelthread.com/projects/hanoi/html/macprom-gfx.html http://www.kernelthread.com/projects/hanoi/html/macprom-gfx.... I remember running that that on my iBook.