This web site exists to document my adventures in writing software emulators for old computer hardware. So far, I have completed (sort of) a Commodore PET emulation and am working on a Sinclair Spectrum emulation.
Recent Posts
The Forth Protocol
In which I accidentally discover a performance enhancement I’m really not a fan of the massive switch statement at the heart of the execution loop, so I have decided to see if I can do something with virtual functions or closures on a WordList. The execute function would be reduced to running a particular function … Continue reading The Forth Protocol
RE-Evaluating Forth
In which I take another crack at the evaluation cherry Just a short post to note that I have finally cracked evaluate. After the refactoring exercise, I still had a number of issues mostly caused by the design decision to put the currently interpreting word in the word list at position 0 and to use … Continue reading RE-Evaluating Forth
Forth Refactored
In which my head exploded so I had to simplify things Because my Forth interpreter is effectively event driven i.e. the input parser parses and then calls the interpreter to interpret one word, it gets very complicated when an executing word needs to pull something off the input parser. It has to exit the interpreter … Continue reading Forth Refactored
Evaluating Forth
In which I evaluate some strings The evaluate word is next on the list of core tests. This allows a Forth program to evaluate a string as if it were another Forth program. The simplest way to implement this would seem to be to implement a stack of sequences of input characters. evaluate then simply … Continue reading Evaluating Forth