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Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

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Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

#1

Post by DogestFogey »

https://github.com/siraben/ti84-forth

Hi HN!

For the past year I've been getting into programming in Z80 assembly (especially for the TI-84+). More recently I've been learning about the Forth programming language and after a lot of searching online (in vain) for a Forth interpreter for the TI-84, I decided to write one myself. It's been fun demoing this to others, because it's a very unexpected use of a calculator.

It's my largest project to date, and I'm interested to know what the HN community thinks, please feel free to critique my code!

-- Ben

Re: Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

#3

Post by Annatar »

Great work and accomplishment, but even better that you are giving Forth some much needed advertising boost: small, light and fast, it's ideal for embedded devices, which is why it has been used for running space ships and powering the OpenBoot PROM in Sun, IBM and Apple systems.

The computer industry needs more people like you.

Re: Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

#4

Post by daniel-cussen »

Hey, if you like forth, check out the GA144. It's amazing. You can do things with it you can't do with anything else, like make viruses in one word of memory, with several useful applications. Underrated, with a small community, but very fun and rewarding too.

Re: Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

#6

Post by mhh__ »

I'm 17 and also _started_ writing a (Asm) forth interpreter, so well done for finishing it.

The code looks readable and pretty clean. Very cool.

If you want to continue down the Z80 route, and have too much time on your hands, I recommend designing a simple IR and building a little compiler/code generator for the Z80 (twas fun for me).

Re: Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

#7

Post by avmich »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #4

Hey, if you like forth, check out the GA144. It's amazing. You can do things with it you can't do with anything else, like make viruses in one word of memory, with several useful applications. Underrated, with a small community, but very fun and rewarding too.

> make viruses in one word of memory

OT, but with PDP-11 you could write 103737 (in octal), which propagated across memory (backwards).

10 means "move", first 37 means "from what R7 is pointing to, autodecrementing R7 before copying", second 37 is "to what R7 is poiting to, autodecrementing R7 before copying". R7 is the program counter, so this operation was copied one word (16 bits) before the executing instruction and then control was passed to that new word.

Of course, with GA144 you can have up to 4 commands in a single 18-bit long instruction, so opportunities are better...

Re: Show HN: I'm 17 and I created a Forth interpreter for the TI-84+ calculator

#10

Post by faissaloo »

mhh__ wrote: post #6

I'm 17 and also _started_ writing a (Asm) forth interpreter, so well done for finishing it. The code looks readable and pretty clean. Very cool. If you want to continue down the Z80 route, and have too much time on your hands, I recommend designing a simple IR and building a little compiler/code generator for the Z80 (twas fun for me).

What instruction set are you building this for?
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