FORTH for the Z80 CPU of the Cerberus 2080 and Cerberus 2100
This FORTH system is designed to run on the Z80 CPU of the Cerberus 2080 and 2100 computers.
A useful introduction to FORTH can be found here. http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/551.jvn.fall01/primer.htm The FORTH system does not have all features mentioned in that document, such as local variables and floating point.
1.1 Package contents
The cerberus-z80-forth package contains the following files.
- manual.txt (the user manual).
- forth80.bin (the FORTH binary to run on Cerberus-2080).
- COPYING (the GPLv3 license file).
- glossary.txt (a list of all words in FORTH with a short explanation).
- squares.4th (a short example program).
- primes.4th (a primes benchmark example).
- testcode.4th (example for code definitions).
- restit.4th a Tetris-like game.
- serpent.4th a Snake-like game.
- spacer.4th a 2d space shooter game.
- tester.4th and core.4th (a regression test suite). Note that this is by a different author and not covered by the GPLv3.
- glosgen.4th and doglos.4th Tools used to generate the glossary.txt file. These cannot be run on Cerberus Z80 FORTH, but you can run them from gforth or any other ANSI standard FORTH with the FILE extension wordset.
- crossz80.4th Can be run from gforth to generate Cerberus Z80 FORTH from source.
- metaz80.4th. The metacompiler, used to generate Cerberus Z80 FORTH from source.
- asmz80.4th. Source of the FORTH assembler.
- asmtst80.4th assembler file containing all types of instructions. Can be cross assembled and then the output checked with a disassembler.
- editor.4th. Source of the FORTH editor.
- kernl80a.4th, kernl80b.4th, kernl80c.4th, and extend80.4th: sourcees of Cerberus Z80 FORTH.
1.2 Prerequisites
You need Dean Belfield's BIOS with additonal functions to load and save files. If you run BBC Basic on the Z80, you will already have this. https://github.com/breakintoprogram/cerberus-bbc-basic/tree/main/cat
You need to reprogram the CAT chip on your board with this version of BIOS if you want to run Cerberus 2080 FORTH.
Cerberus 2100 has this version of BIOS as a standard, so you do not need to reprogram CAT on this machine.