[TUHS] forth on early unix

[ron minnich via TUHS]

To get even weirder, the original expansion rom standard for PCI included
forth byte codes as an option for the ROM. That never quite worked out, it
all became x86, and all the other architectures got stuck with an x86
emulator (and even some x86 firmware included an x86 emulator ...)

more here: https://www.openfirmware.org/1275/home.html (dead links
included: I really did want to hear Mitch Bradley singing the open firmware
song, too bad!). But that page is doing OK for being 29 years old ...

I realize this borders on COFF, but it does connect to Unix a tiny bit.



On Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 4:54 PM Warner Losh via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 22, 2025, 2:55 PM Stuff Received via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org>
> wrote:
>
> > On 2025-09-22 09:34, Phillip Harbison via TUHS wrote:
> > > Dave Horsfall via TUHS wrote:
> > >> Larry McVoy via TUHS wrote:
> > >> > I'm still not a forth fan.  That said, the sun boot proms were in
> > forth
> > >> > and there was some pretty cool forth in there.  It knew the VM
> > >> > structures, it knew sockets, it knew a lot.  I'm still not a forth
> fan
> > >> > but it was useful.
> > >>
> > >> The FreeBSD boot scripts are written in FORTH (for the early stages at
> > >> least).
> > >>
> > >> Cute language, but then again I was also brought up on APL\360 :-)
> > >
> > > Wasn't Open Firmware based on Forth? I recall running into it when
> > > working with MkLinux.
> >
> > https://github.com/openbios/openboot (and other tidbits in the same
> repo)
> >
>
> Yea. The FreeBSD loader started out trying to replicate these interfaces
> but fell well short of that goal and then diverged...
>
> Warner
>
> >
>