Forth & small systems report: potential unrealized: the MicroMED advisor

ABSTRACT

This column begins a multipart series describing various projects in which I was involved, which for one reason or another, did not live up to their full potential. They are reviewed here in the hope that these exemplars may help others to avoid the traps and pitfalls which have ensnared the author during his career. Most are "small systems", or subsystems of other projects; many involve the Forth programming language.

REFERENCES

• 1: Merritt, Rick, "Home health care initiatives ride mobile wave", Electronic Engineering Times, June 12, 2006, pg.6.
• 2: Stookey, Donald, Explorations in Glass: An Autobiography, John Wiley & Sons, 2000, ISBN: 1-57498-124-2.
• 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer.
• 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_programming_language.
• 5: Moore, Charles and Rather, Elizabeth, "The FORTH Program for Spectral Line Observing", Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol.61 No.9, Sept. 1973, pg. 1346--1349.
• 6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO.
• 7: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus.
• 8: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8080.
• 9: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802.
• 10: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSAI.
• 11: Weisbecker, Joseph, "Build The COSMAC 'ELF' A Low-Cost Experimenter's Microcomputer", Part 1, Popular Electronics, August 1976, pg.33--38. http://incolor.inebraska.com/bill_r/elf/html/elf-1-33.htm.
• 12: http://www.cosmacelf.com/docs.htm.
• 13: http://www.national.com/company/pressroom/history80.html.
• 14: Elizabeth D. Rather , Donald R. Colburn , Charles H. Moore, The evolution of Forth, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.28 n.3, p.177-199, March 1993
• 15: http://theforthsource.com. (FIG-Forth listings).
• 16: Gerry Kane , Adam Osborne, Sixteen Bit Microprocessor Handbook, Osborne/McGraw-Hill, Berkeley, CA, 1981
• 17: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_standard.
• 18: http://www.irda.org.
• 19: http://www.avocetsystems.com.
• 20: http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst/figforth.html.
• 21: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_eratosthenes.
• 22: Paul Frenger, Quartus forth for the palm pilot, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.37 n.8, August 2002 [doi>10.1145/596992.596994]
• 23: http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/COSMAC+1802.
• 24: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1.
• 25: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2.
• 26: Paul Frenger, Forth report: strap-on Forth, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.37 n.4, April 2002 [doi>10.1145/510857.510859]
• 27: http://www.mpeforth.com.