[Coco] getting a .CCC file into an EPROM

[spereira1952 at comcast.net]

To reply to my own question, I sent the ColorForth.ccc file off to an online friend of mine to have it burned into a 27128 EPROM. 

I received that EPROM back in the mail yesterday. I inserted the EPROM into one of my EPROM cartridge boards, and VOILA! I now have ColorForth from Talbot Microsystems in a cartridge, and apparently working properly. 

Color Forth uses cassette tape for its mass storage. I am currently in the middle of typing in the source file for Color Forth, that is included in the manual. Once I have the kernal typed in and assembling properly, I hope to adjust the places that it resides in memory so I can have a file that is loadable from disk, or Drivewire or SDC on my CoCo 3 system. After that, I hope to be able to look into the storage, and devise a way to save Forth screens off to a disk file, too. 

Thanks for listening! 

smp 
- - - 
Stephen Pereira 
Bedford, NH 03110 
KB1SXE 

----- Original Message -----

From: spereira1952 at comcast.net 
To: coco at maltedmedia.com 
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2014 7:39:46 AM 
Subject: [Coco] getting a .CCC file into an EPROM 

Hello all, 

I've been on this list for several months now, and I greatly appreciate all the experience and expertise that is shared here. 

Over the past year, I rekindled my interest in the CoCo, acquiring a CoCo 3, making up an HDB-DOS cartridge, and I am successfully now working with DW4. I just received my SDC card and case from the good folks here, so another adventure awaits me. 

Another passion of mine is to get the Forth language running on every vintage computer I own. A while back, Robert Gault graciously assisted me and transformed the ColorForth.ccc file located in the Color Computer Archive into a .wav file, along with another .wav file to perform some memory adjustments, so I could reach my goal of being able to get Forth running on my CoCo 3. 

Since then, I have been hoping that a ColorForth cartridge might show up on eBay, or that someone, somewhere might offer one up for sale. So far, no joy on that. 

Lurking in the back of my mind is the idea that I could get the code from the .ccc file burned into an EPROM, and I could build my own ColorForth cartridge, like I did with HDB-DOS. Is this simply a case of reading the .ccc file with a HEX file editor and exporting the code into a form that an EPROM burner will accept, like an Intel HEX file? Once that code gets burned into an appropriate EPROM (ColorForth looks like it's 10K bytes, so it would have to be a 27128, I guess) I believe that all I would have to do is put it into a cartridge, like I did with HDB-DOS, and it would be good to go. Right? 

Please let me know if I am missing anything, or if my belief here is correct. 

Beyond that, if there are any other Forth addicts out there, please speak up. Is there another documented instance of Forth that I should be considering? The reason I settled on ColorForth is that the .ccc file is available, and the manual for it is also available. If others are also available, I'd like to try out those, as well. 

Thanks very much, in advance, 

smp 
- - - 
Stephen Pereira 
Bedford, NH 03110 
KB1SXE