ForthOS is a complete, standalone operating system for the PC.
It includes command line, compiler, debugger, editor, and filesystem.
You can give it a test drive by booting the standalone CD (image
provided so you can burn your own). If you like it, you can install
it onto a disk partition and boot directly from your hard disk.
ForthOS is the basis for the
author's own experimental software work; unlike many other Forth
systems, this one is a real tool in day-to-day use as a part
of a larger development.
It is a fully standalone
system, with a
metacompiler
used to generate new versions of
ForthOS while running under ForthOS.
Please read about its legal status; the short
version is that ForthOS is in the public domain.
ForthOS supports:
System features:
- 32-bit addressing
- Command line history and editing
- Multi-tasking
- Pentium-based real time clock
- Auto-pause for console output
- Block-oriented file I/O
- A
filesystem which organizes ForthOS blocks
- Multiboot/GRUB compliant bootloading
- Multiple virtual screens with screen flipping using function keys
- IDE
- VGA
- RS-232 (COM) ports
Forth language features:
- The original eForth vocabulary
- Many additional vocabulary words, mostly standards based
- Vocabularies
- VOCAB.WORD extension to find WORD in VOCAB regardless of
current search order.
- Structures and enumerations
- A full
object oriented extension with classes and inheritance
- A variant on local variables
(more closely related to a
lambda binding) with optional input and output stack format
enforcement.
- Scoping of identifiers (Local and scrLocal).
The current version is ForthOS 1.0. Please read about
the installation here.
Comments may be sent to
vandys@forthos.org. Due to spam, this mail address
connects with an auto-responder which will tell you how to
establish contact with the author.
A private newsgroup server has been
set up to permit communication among interested ForthOS users;
a read-only view of it is here.
You require an account to access the
news server to read or
post to the ForthOS newsgroup(s), please contact the author
if you're interested in becoming an active user or developer.
Enjoy!