Re: Z80 CP/M Forth & loading code from disk

On Mar 19, 2:02 pm, "John Crane" <jc email> wrote:
> I'm new to Forth and thought it would be a useful addition to my older
8-bit
> machines.  I've tried a few Forth's from the Walnut Creek CP/M CD, but
can't
> seem to find one that allows me to load Forth code that was previously
saved
> to a disk file (with a generic text editor).  The closest I've found was
> Forth83 (8080 Forth 83 Model V 2.1.0 from June 84) that actually
mentions
> files in the docs.  All the others talk about disk blocks - which cause
> screwy behavior (I guess nobody got around to connecting the early
Forth's
> to the disk calls in BDOS).

> I think I must be missing something that's obvious.  Because, it seems
to
> me, just loading a text file from disk should be a very simple thing.

Also, for actually loading Forth code that was saved in a disk file,
on a Z80 Forth, get the Z80 CamelForth:

http://www.camelforth.com/page.php?5

Add the following two lines to the front of the source, save it as
a .SUB file, and use SUBMIT to run it:

XSUB
CAMEL80
.... forth source

As the directions there say, if you want to use that to define a new
Forth image with those words included, then at the end of the file add
the line:

DECIMAL HERE 0 256 UM/MOD . DROP BYE

That should display the page parameter for the CP/M SAVE command as
the last step of the SUBMIT file, which can be used immediately after
the SUBMIT file is run to save the image.