{"id":640,"date":"2019-07-05T10:26:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-05T00:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/?p=640"},"modified":"2023-01-27T10:54:38","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T23:54:38","slug":"a-rockwell-rsc-forth-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"A Rockwell RSC Forth System"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I was a trainee in the Electronics Lab at the Research School of Physical Sciences at the Australian national university, we used Forth to control systems. Tom Rhymes had designed a locally developed Z80 STD bus board, and I modified a version of the Z80 Fig Forth to allow auto boot of words and storage using 2816 EEPROM devices, but I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, one of the local electronics magazines published an article in conjunction with a Queensland company called Energy Control about a RSC Forth system using a 65F11 chip. the nice thing about this chip was the fact that it provided a 5.25″ floppy controller, allowing forth screens to be written to mass storage. I decided that I needed one, so I send them a cheque, and waited for the kit to arrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once the board arrived, I populated it, and installed it into a Dick Smith project box. I used a standard ferguson +\/- 15V and +8V transformed from the era and used linear regulators for the +\/- 12V and +5v rails. I was clearly not loaded with money, as I didn’t waste money on PCB connectors \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Front view<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Note the DCE\/DTE switch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you can see from the rear panel, it was fully loaded as far as I\/O was concerned, with a connection for an external floppy (DA15), and Parallel Printer port (DB25) and All serial options (DB25 \/ DE9) with a DCE\/DTE switch to flip TX and RX, allowing most serial issues to be sorted on the spot. The device did not support hardware flow control. I doubled the clock speed, so the default console baud rate was 2400 Baud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A quirk of the RSC forth software was that it needed 2400 Baud, even parity and two stop bits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Origibally I installed a 5.25″ drive, but eventually 3.5″ drives were cheap enough that I installed one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

in use, I would normally use my trusty model 100 computer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The normal RSC signon message was replaced by ‘VK1ZDJ DEV SYS”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As far as software was concerned, RSC forth was beautifully documented:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/object>RSC-FORTH_Users_Manual<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here are some copies of the various development documentation including the project article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/object>ETI-RSC-Forth-Project<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/object>65F11-Datasheet<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/object>65F11-ApplicationNote<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As you can see from the Application Note, Energy Control simply used the Application Note design in their project and updated the silk screen to have their name on it. I love a good tape layout \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have archived the original ROM that came with the board here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RSC-FORTH-ROM<\/a>Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In all it was a fun system – I designed a remote disk subsystem for the TRS80 model 100 with it, but from memory I could never get a suitable host side of the interface working – In reflection, I should have used the TRS-80 PDS protocol, but that would not arrive for a couple of years, by then I had moved onto other things. The perils of being young.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a trainee in the Electronics Lab at the Research School of Physical Sciences at the Australian national university, we used Forth to control systems. Tom Rhymes had designed a locally developed Z80 STD bus board,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[34,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/RSC-Forth-Box-6.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vk1zdj.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}