What about an "anthology" cartridge of new software?

[+OLD CS1]

Another thread (I cannot find) was asking about games for a compilation multi-cart. It hit me this morning that maybe we could take the games and programs which are developed in a year and include them in a single multi-cart. Since we have the ability to launch BASIC programs from a cartridge, those could also be included. Could TurboForth or fbForth programs be made into cartridges?

 

 

In the case of programs which cannot be made into a cartridge, an anthology disk, perhaps? I know, how quaint, but some people still use them

[+Lee Stewart]

Another thread (I cannot find) was asking about games for a compilation multi-cart. It hit me this morning that maybe we could take the games and programs which are developed in a year and include them in a single multi-cart. Since we have the ability to launch BASIC programs from a cartridge, those could also be included. Could TurboForth or fbForth programs be made into cartridges?

 

atari_age_ti_anthology_2015_old-style_label.png

 

In the case of programs which cannot be made into a cartridge, an anthology disk, perhaps? I know, how quaint, but some people still use them

 

The first two ROM banks for TurboForth and the first four banks for fbForth are required for running those systems. Forth programs are built upon the previously defined dictionary, which must be present. I am afraid it would be a daunting task to put all of that in the same cartridge with other programs in such a way that selection is possible, unless the ROM base addresses could be offset to start Bank 0 anywhere in the ROM space.

 

It would certainly be relatively simple to put Forth programs into ROM space that could be loaded into expansion RAM to run. That ROM would be dedicated to fbForth or TurboForth, however. For fbForth, which is currently running in a 32KiB ROM, it would require, at the very least, a 64KiB ROM to have space for the program repository. It would also require reorganizing the current system a bit and writing a menu system and a loader. The same obtains for TurboForth, but the ROM would need to go from 16KiB to 32KiB.

 

...lee