The idea behind a virtual machine based on colour forth, has always been a stepping stone to cross hardware compatibility and trade.

The principle is:

- That a machine forth like binary could be used to represent a color forth program.

- That, the color forth program binary, even though having correlations with a subset of 386 coding, did not represent the target machine code, but maybe translated as wished.

- That what was intended from near the beginning, was that various code sequences be interpreted as Macros, which translate into instructions in new instruction sets. Allowing a degree of dynamic design of instruction sets and new instructions, and IP independence between instruction sets.

- Where writers and compilers could code in such a way to target increased performance in different instruction sets, even using words to represent the new instructions and how they should be coded for each new processors. Having no need to do so, to get fast working code. With a further code refinement step after this.

- Allowing processing companies to change their machine forth instruction set architectures from processor generation to processor generation, allowing for simple recompile between them. Allowing for improved drop in replacement parts to interpret the code to better match the new processor architecture (this level becomes more complex to achieve) with recompiled update, reflash, and active load time compiling self updating, or each time. The deterministic architecture is replaced by suitable memory and storage space, and timing mechanism.

This was the intention years ago for an ecosystem. Thank you Jeff Fox for his machine forth to 386 code work, and Charles Moore, for the previous compact little
Color Forth language.

Actually, as I remember the 80s, that retro-technology wasn't about
unification we can see today — but exactly the opposite: it was
constant confrontation and comparison of various ideas, solutions,
hardware platforms etc. We didn't have that powerful machines on
our desks, but actually that times somehow were much more interesting
regarding home/personal computer market. Today it's just „PC or Mac?".

So if you mean kind of unification, it's already done: Raspberry Pi and
its „derivatives” (all that Banana Pi, Orange Pi, BeagleBone etc.). Quite
nice and capable pieces of hardware. And not expensive!

On the opposite side we can see fine things like Colour Maximite (and
its whole family).

You wrote formerly about FPGA? There's MEGA65 ready to buy (but expensive).

On Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 2:33:28 AM UTC+10, Zbig wrote:
> Actually, as I remember the 80s, that retro-technology wasn't about
> unification we can see today — but exactly the opposite: it was
> constant confrontation and comparison of various ideas, solutions,
> hardware platforms etc. We didn't have that powerful machines on
> our desks, but actually that times somehow were much more interesting
> regarding home/personal computer market. Today it's just „PC or Mac?".
>
> So if you mean kind of unification, it's already done: Raspberry Pi and
> its „derivatives” (all that Banana Pi, Orange Pi, BeagleBone etc.). Quite
> nice and capable pieces of hardware. And not expensive!
>
> On the opposite side we can see fine things like Colour Maximite (and
> its whole family).
>
> You wrote formerly about FPGA? There's MEGA65 ready to buy (but expensive).

Just another project as far as retro goes. The whole VM thing is about a common unified software publication architecture, option. People use whatever. MSDOS is technically retro too, even in a hypervisor with ability share resources copy and paste etc. Retro is more about the feel, games and what could have been done. It's more like the home computer day and earlier for me, of which the Commodore Amiga 1200 and Risc OS machines were peaks. If people want something else, they can.

It's also about a modern version, learning from the lessons of the past. Which software support and publication costs were a big part. You can say it's an upgraded alternative to sone form of advanced basic not requiring a set resolution.

I didn't know that PI or FPGA were representations of what you could have done with Forth processors in retro times. PI itself is not really more retro than what I was looking at, but certainly different from what could have been done at the time, and with forth processors and the best low footprint graphics technology. If we look at variety, very little variety existed in most of the market, mainly Commodore 64 as a publication platform in the US, as people voted with their feet, but it didn't mean those machines were not retro.