Forth for HP-71B

[J-F Garnier]

(11-25-2015 06:30 PM)smp Wrote:  I took a look at the page you referenced, and I am confused about Soft FORTH. It sounds to me like the Soft FORTH *along with* whatever your application is, needs to be programmed into an EPROM. I did not see that Soft FORTH alone should be programmed into an EPROM and then FORTH programs developed after that on the HP-71B. Am I mis-reading the information?

The Soft Forth is a Forth kernel able to run in a standard (i.e. CMT of HHP module) 64KB EPROM module (actually RAM would be fine too but you would need a specific and unusual hardware to have a 64KB RAM port).
At the time, the purpose of the Soft Forth was to allow third parties to distribute a Forth application without the need for the customers to have the Forth module.
But developing a soft Forth application still requires the Forth module (and a 64KB RAM port to hold the soft Forth kernel and application image, actually...)

So Soft Forth is not a substitute of the Forth module, otherwise it would have been much more used :-)

J-F