I need to implement a Forth so I can write firmware for my keyboard so I can write actual code.

Install gcc-avr and run make upload.

Welp.

Turns out running a Forth in a Teensy microcontroller that has 2.5kb of RAM is an unrealistic goal for a first-time Forth implementor. I’m sure it’s possible to do with some extreme cleverness, but at the moment I’m admitting defeat and moving on.

Note that the interpreter does load and can run simple programs, but it runs out of memory about 20% of the way into the code for the keyboard controller. For the time being I’ve ported my firmware to C, though I would like to finish this at some point in the future once I get a chance to upgrade to a more capable microcontroller.

This Forth dialect is a bit weird for two reasons: 0) it’s designed to run on a chip that has 32kb of flash for storage of C programs but only 2.5kb of RAM for Forth programs and data combined. Because of this, it is less self-hosting than is traditional. There are other Forths for AVR that store Forth code in flash, but as far as I can tell they all require wiping the bootloader, which I don’t want to do. 1) It’s also implemented by someone who has barely used Forth and doesn’t really know C.

We use malloc rather than managing our own heap. This gives us a bit more flexibility, but it also means things like allot can’t just assume a contiguous section of dictionary space, so it works more like a varying-width variable than traditional allot. There are probably other weird idiosyncrasies, but I’m not familiar enough with Forth to spot them.

• B0, B1, B2, B3: rows (top to bottom)
• D0-7: first 8 columns (left to right)
• F4, F5, F6: last three columns

• for each row
  • delay
  • read columns for the current row
  • check to see if this row has changed since the last read
    • if so, set debounce for this row to cols; reset debounce counter
  • if debounce counter
    • decrement debounce counter
    • if decremented to zero
      • set the current matrix row to the last read value

• ☑ .s
• ☑ push a number onto the stack
• ☑ call a primitive
• ☑ call a primitive with an arg
• ☑ easy way to load primitives into the dictionary
• ☑ store and fetch
• ☑ define a constant
• ☑ define a variable
• ☑ define a word
• ☑ conditions
• ☑ null-terminated strings
• ☑ read programs from stdin
• ☑ nested if
• ☑ else
• ☑ loops
• ☑ store and fetch single bytes
• ☑ run on the board
• ☑ LED blink
• ☑ send hard-coded USB key codes
• ☑ send hard-coded USB key codes from forth #4
• ☑ send key codes by column
• ☑ read forth source from separate file instead of inline strings #3
• ☑ comments
• ☑ move forth source to flash
• ☑ full matrix #6
• ☑ modifiers
• ☐ word execution keys #10
• ☐ debounced matrix #7
• ☐ layered matrix #8
• ☐ interactive mode #9