My4TH discrete cpu computer uses I2C devices and custom FORTH code by myself to do some show off ...

https://diode.zone/videos/watch/8c457253-4a1c-4ca3-92ee-508c105f6d81

After two weeks of not doing anything technical but enjoying my vacation, I have been tinkering with my #ForthDeck again, adding another 64 blocks (64K) of EEPROM based block storage to it, which I connected via the I2C bus.

#Forth
#My4TH
#Hardware

@deadbeef Oh, that's a long story.

I read about #Forth in 1987 in a Commodore 64 magazine that included a homebrew Forth compiler written in BASIC.

It was slow and my 14 year old me was a little too young to understand the overall concept of the language. But I was fascinated by it and that stuck for decades (I even bought Leo Brodies book back then but never got beyond the first five chapters).

Fast-forward to 2022: after having fallen in love with the #rc2014 homebrew kit and having built several other #8bit replica systems since then, I learned about the #Mynor #My4th homebrew kit. It's a cpu-less 8 bit system (the CPU is made of discrete 74xx logic ICs) which features a Forth compiler instead of BASIC in its ROM.

I built it and then I *had* to get Forth into my brain to use it. And this time things fell into place. Having learned 8085 Assembler some 30 years ago may have helped.

I love Forth because it allows you to do rapid "function" prototyping interactively just like you would work with an interpreter language while it gives you the speed and low-level hardware access of assembler.

One of the rsults of my Forth efforts so far is the #TMSnake game for #rc2014 systems.

Just built a 4-port #I2C #bus #expander for the #Mynor #My4TH #ForthDeck so I can finally get rid of my current breadboard setup which has been sitting on my desk for far too long, causing even more of a mess. Turned out nice, I think ...

#retrocomputing