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I always get the impression that people spend more time writing Forth interpreters, rather than writing Forth programs to solve actual problems.

I haven't seen or touched a 6502 based computer since 1986. Are people using those ancient computers or actually using new(er) ones? I see 6502 based kits are available as are some new SBCs.

This is where it gets interesting. The comments are both hilarious and educational.

https://github.com/agsb/milliForth-6502/blob/main/scrs/jones...

This is what I miss about the Red Power mod for Minecraft. I wonder if GregTech would see the fun in adding some sort of CPU that wouldn't be the worst emulation stacked inside of hand written 'machine' op functions...

Offhand, anyone know of any good (either long stable, or better, well maintained and likely to persist) CPU emulators for Java? Something that does 'web assembly' might fit the task if it's reasonable to transpile a fake binary format into real WASM.

The first good search result I got was : https://github.com/dylibso/chicory : better than wasmer-java for this use case since it doesn't depend on native binaries.

Relating this back to the topic. It would be interesting to have to, at least copy in someone else's if not, write your own Forth interpreter to help bootstrap computers.

I bet they could get it even smaller for the 6809

Not trying to be harsh, just a bit of snarky humour, but they should partner with the “6502 as a service” folks and offer obsolescence as a service.

I did have some good times with my 6502, as well as a dalliance with Forth… but I don’t really miss it when I’m playing with my 10 cent 32 bit RiskV chips and marvelling at the beauty of their ISA. It brings to mind a Joe Cocker song.

Heh - I was looking for examples of 6502 Forth. I did fine fig-forth, but this looks interesting too now. This always happens on hacker news - I have some interest, and I see it on the front page of Hacker News soon after.

oh hell yeah. makes me want to go grab a 6502 box from the gar-age. Do the rPi Pico 2W next!