[colorforth] Experiments and troubles with colorForth 1.0

[trey@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 10:54:37PM -0400, Michael A. Losh wrote:

> I downloaded COLOR.COM (stamped "cmcf 1.0" in bytes 3 to 10) and tried
> running it on some PCs.  Here are some details and results so far...
> 
> [1] Generic Pentium II 333 MHz, ASUS P2L97 mobo. with Intel LX chipset
> (AGP), LeadTek Permedia 2 (8 MB) AGP video adapter.
> Results: Running COLOR.COM in DOS (also FreeDOS) goes dark, and typing SAVE
> (;a/d [space]) turns on the floppy light, but no data seems to be written to
> the disk.
> 
I couldn't make the save trick work either.  I eventually used 'dd' to
transfer the file.  I suspect your Permedia 2 card doesn't support the VESA
BIOS extenions required to put the card into 1024x768 linear frame buffer
mode.  If you've got a VESA BIOS driver for DOS for your card, you might try
loading it before you run COLOR.COM.

> [2] Same PC as [1], wrote COLOR.COM to diskette using DEBUG as instructed on
> the colorForth website.  When rebooting, the PC hangs at the point it reads
> and executes the floppy.  The display is still in text mode, and I still see
> the BIOS informtion normally seen during the boot.  The text cursor is
> flashing and the floppy light is on, but the system seems unresponsive.
> Trying to execute the SAVE command blindly does not cause any floppy
> activitiy that I can dedect.
> 
> QUESTION: before running the DEBUG command to write COLOR.COM to a diskette,
> should I first run SYS from DOS to mark it bootable?  I assume that
> COLOR.COM is totally self-contained.
> 
The first 512 bytes of the COLOR.COM contains the appropriate info.

> [3] Dell 4100 (? I think.. I'm not in front of it right now) Pentium III
> 800+ MHZ PC, unknown mobo & chipset (until I can look it up tomorrow). I
> think it has an ATI video adapter.  COLOR.COM from FreeDOS opens in graphics
> mode with the colorForth logo and UI and the keyboard works!  The SAVE
> command turns on the floppy light, but it does not appear to actually
> transfer any data to the diskette (I could still read it as a normal DOS
> diskette).  I was able to add two numbers together on the stack (baby-steps)
> but I did not try much else.  I didn't try the editor yet to browse the
> colorForth source code.
> 
I haven't tried actually saving anything in colorForth yet.  I'll give it a
whirl when I get a chance.

Sorry for not quoting less :-(
-- 
Trey Boudreau     | Home: trey@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Software Engineer | Work: trey@xxxxxx
Be, Inc.          | http://www.be.com
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