volksFORTH Readme

Version 1.0
06. November 2005 (cas)

volksFORTH is a 16bit Forth System produced by the german Forth Gesellschaft e.V. Major development of this system was done between 1985 until 1989. The volksFORTH Project was revived in 2005 with the goal to produce a manageable Forthsystem for computer systems with restricted system resources.

Some modern Forth Systems were influenced by or were derived from volksFORTH (GNU-Forth, bigForth).

The current Version of VolksForth is 3.91. Work on Version 3.90 has started.

At this time volksFORTH is available for this Systems:

volksFORTH MS-DOS (Intel x86 Architecture i8086-ia64)
volksFORTH 6502 (Commodore 64, Commodore Plus 4)
volksFORTH Z80 (CP/M, Amstrad CPC)
volksFORTH 68000 (Atari ST)

Copyright

The volksFORTH Sources are made available under the terms of the
BSD License - http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php

The Handbook is Copyright (c) 1985 - 2005 Forth Gesellschaft
e.V. ( Klaus Schleisiek, Ulrich Hoffmann, Bernd Pennemann, Georg Rehfeld
and Dietrich Weineck).

The Handbook, binary Files and Source-code for volksFORTH as well as Information about
Forth Gesellschaft are available on the Forth Gesellschaft Web-server at
http://www.forth-ev.de/

(most of the Information is still in german. We are planning to provide future versions with english documentation)

Information and Help about the Programming Language Forth can be found on the Internet,
starting with the Website of the Forthgesellschaft, or in the Usenet Forum de.comp.lang.forth (via Google Groups: http://groups.google.de/group/de.comp.lang.forth )

Details for volksFORTH MS-DOS

* System Prerequisites
  MS-DOS/PC-DOS compatible Computer with min. 64KB RAM and with
  MS-DOS/PC-DOS 2.11 or better

* Installation
  Copy the files from directory "Files" in a newly created directory on your PC.

  This volksFORTH distribution contains

  KERNEL   COM       A volksFORTH Kernel, created using KERNEL.SCR
  KERNEL   ORG       original volksFORTH 3.81 Kernel (1989)
  MINIMAL  COM       Minimal System for customization 
  VOLKS4TH COM       Standard volksFORTH Development System, created using VOLKS4TH.SYS 

  ANSI     VID       Videodisplaydriver based on the MS-DOS ANSI.SYS Driver
  BIOS     VID       Videodisplaydriver using BIOS-call $10
  MULTI    VID       Multitasking Videodisplaydriver using BIOS-call $10

  MINIMAL  SYS       Load-file, to create MINIMAL.COM out of KERNEL.COM 
  VOLKS4TH SYS       Load-file, to create VOLKS4TH.COM out of KERNEL.COM

  GRAPHIC  PRN       Printer-interface for IBM-Graphic Printer
  M130I    PRN       Printer-interface for M130i
  NEC8023  PRN       Printer-interface for NEC 8023a

  DISKS    CFG       Configuration-file for Memory-Layout
  SYSTEM   CFG       Configuration-file for Floppy-drives

  ASM      SCR       8088/86 Postfix-Assembler
  BLOCKING SCR       Helper-program to transfer Screens (physical Blocks) into Files 
  DOUBLE   SCR       Forth Definitions for double (32 bit) Integers
  EDITOR   SCR       Full Screen Editor
  EXTEND   SCR       Standard System-additions
  F83ASM   SCR       The F83 Assembler
  INSTALL  SCR       Forth Definition of Command-keys in the Editor
  KERNEL   SCR       volksFORTH Kernel Source-code 
  PRIMED   SCR       (Very) limited Editor for first Step customizations
  SEE      SCR       Automatic Decompiler
  SERIAL   SCR       Forth Definitions for the serial interface (RS-232)
  TASKER   SCR       The Multitasker
  TIMER    SCR       Forth Definitions to access the IBM-PC Timer Source
  TOOLS    SCR       Manual Decompiler, Tracer and DUMP-Utility

  Please try first to run the VOLKS4TH.COM Program. Will the Forth System appear 
  with a Status-line in Line 25, the PC's Display is compatible to the multi-
  tasking Display-driver MULTI.VID. If no Status-line appears, or no Forth System
  at all, your Systems Display is not 100% IBM compatible and the volksFORTH System
  need to be customized.

  If this is the case, please try to start MINIMAL.COM. This should work on all systems.
  If this also fails, the Operating System is not MS-DOS compatible as this version only
  uses the MS-DOS Routines to access the screen.

  MINIMAL will print a short description of the simple Editor. The simple Editor can be 
  used to customize the load-file VOLKS4TH.SYS to create a new Forth Kernel with a less
  feature-rich Display Driver.

  A Prerequisite for the simple Display Driver is a loaded MS-DOS ANSI.SYS Driver
  (loaded in CONFIG.SYS). If no ANSI.SYS Driver exists (and the standard VOLKS4TH.COM
  Kernel will now load), it is not possible to use the standard volksFORTH Full-Screen
  Editor. If ANSI.SYS is available for the System, the Forth Kernel can be customized to
  use the ANSI.SYS Driver. Please load MINIMAL.COM and enter at the prompt:

  USE VOLKS4TH.SYS   1 LIST

  Now, using the "NEW" Command (see Description of the Simple-Editor), the line
  in the File VOLKS4TH.SYS reading

  "include multi.vid" 

   can be changed to read

  "include ansi.vid"

  Now open the File "EDITOR.SCR" and comment-out the line that is loading the
  Multitasking Display Driver "MULTI.VID". Enable the line that is loading the
  ANSI-Display Driver "ANSI.VID" and save the file.

  Return to the MS-DOS Command Prompt with "BYE" and enter

  KERNEL INCLUDE VOLKS4TH.SYS

  to create a new, customized VOLKS4TH.COM File, which is now using ANSI.SYS
  Control Characters to access the Display. Compiling a new Kernel can take 
  a while on older systems (8086, i286).

  When loading the new System, it will start with a "beep" tone and will display
  a Status-line in Line 25.
  
  If you plan to use the Floppy or Hard-disks in DIRECT-Mode (RAW Forth Blocks is Sectors,
  without MS-DOS FAT Filesystem), use "INCLUDE DISKS.CFG" to configure the Drive-
  Capacity. This customizations can be saved back to disk with the command
  "SAVESYSTEM VOLKS4TH.COM".

  The Display-Driver "BIOS.VID" and "MULTI.VID" are using both the BIOS-call $10 
  Interface to access the screen. "BIOS.VID" is a little bit faster when accessing
  the screen, because it doesn't take multitasking in account (only one task is allowed
  to access the screen).

  If you plan to use a printer, you need to load a printer configuration file. The are
  three printer configuration files included in this distribution:

  GRAPHIC.PRN   M130I.PRN   NEC8023.PRN.

  If you have a printer that need different Control-Sequences you need to create a new
  Printer Configuration File. If you need help creating a new Printer Configuration for
  your Printer, try to contact a volksFORTH Expert at the Forth Gesellschaft 
  ( http://www.forth-ev.de). Please consider sharing new Printer Configuration Files with
  us so that we can include them in new Versions of this Distribution.

  The Printer Driver File must be loaded from the Load-file VOLKS4TH.SYS similar to the 
  Video Display Driver.

  The System is now fully customized for your system.

  
* Using volksFORTH in an Emulator
 * Windows 9x, ME
   volksFORTH 3.81 should work fine in a dedicated DOS Session of Windows 9x/ME
 
 * Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista
   volksFORTH should work fine in the DOS Environment of modern Microsoft Windows Systems.
   If you experience problems with volksFORTH under Windows NT, 2000, XP or Vista we recommend
   using a DOS-Emulator like Dos-Box. (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/)

 * OS/2 / eComStation
   volksFORTH works without any known Problems in the DOS-Environment of OS/2 2.x and eComStation
   
 * Unix / Linux
   On Linux / Unix Systems using x86 Hardware volksFORTH can be run using the DosEmu
   Environment ( http://www.dosemu.org ). The commercial PC-Emulator VMWare can be used as a
   MS-DOS/PC-DOS Environment. On other Hardware Platforms (MacOS X PowerPC, Solaris, HP/UX) 
   we recommend using the PC-Emulators Qemu (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) and DosBox
  (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/).

  For a fully free (aka OpenSource) Forth System Solution we recommend using the free 
  MS-DOS / PC-DOS Alternative FreeDOS ( http://www.freedos.org/ ).

The Forth Live-Linux CD-ROM (available in the Download-section of the Forth Gesellschaft Website) includes the current Versions of volksFORTH direct usable without Installation including the Handbooks as PDF-Files.

Have fun with volksFORTH
the volksFORTH Team

