Re: DragonFly boot2 - moved out of commits thread

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Oliver Fromme wrote:

*snip*  (evidence that senility is wasted on the aged...)

> so you can't implement it in Forth.

nineteen NINETY 7/8 ???

IIRC, Chuck had ported FORTH to over a dozen machine/CPU architectures 
before the *1970's* were out.

Sun didn't pick it just 'coz it fit into an affordable chip. They picked 
it because it could do everything they needed to have done, and UNLIKE 
hand-generated machine-code, was already incredibly portable.

Essential, since they never were a one-CPU outfit.
But were - at one time - a *BSD-based outfit...

had htey needed it, they'd have added a second PROM, and not noticed the 
cost.

D'you have any idea what a Sun workstation cost in relative terms of the 
day?

Typically the better part of a full year's pay for many of the folks 
privileged to share the use of one. And shared they most often were.

As to why FORTH was appreciated ...

Just try keeping the proper set from among a half-dozen different 
families of op codes matched to the processor actually at hand on any 
given day... and awaiting news of your failure to arrive - very slowly - 
over an ASR-33... if not neon indicators.  LED's were still-yet the 
stuff of science-fiction.

Telling folks who HAVE done - 30 years ago - and in machine-code prior 
to FORTH - that a particular 'something' can *no longer BE done* with 
the tools we were ever-so grateful to have....

  is a hex:

'EA' (6502),

'00' (8080),

'12' (6809)

IOW   .....'NOP'.... waste of bus-cycles.

;-)


Bill