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05:02:46 <tangentstorm> you guys are gonna like this ... :)
06:06:41 <tangentstorm> so so  close, but my brain is melting and i'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard
06:06:48 <tangentstorm> https://github.com/sabren/b4/tree/master/b4a
06:08:12 <tangentstorm> i wrote a very simple assembler in perl with a simple macro system based on capturing the write pointer like what retro and forth do
06:08:46 <tangentstorm> then i hand coded a ngaro image that uses the one character dispatch idea
06:09:51 <tangentstorm> and left 256 slots so you can fill them in with whatever you want
06:10:23 <tangentstorm> the idea is that your retro is a blank slate but it has the ability to send one instruction at a time
06:11:34 <tangentstorm> so it's forth but instead of keeping the dictionary in the image, you keep it in whatever's programming the image
06:12:10 <tangentstorm> anyway. it's neat. probably doesn't work yet, but it's still neat.
06:12:22 <tangentstorm> have a good day. i'll be asleep. :)
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09:32:16 <erider> hi all 
09:59:32 <docl> hi erider 
09:59:39 <erider> hi docl 
10:35:56 <erider> tangentstorm: what are you using that perl script for? 
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14:36:37 <tangentstorm> hey all
14:38:05 <tangentstorm> erider: it's an assembler for any kind of 32-bit binary file.
14:39:36 <tangentstorm> erider: if you feed ngaro.b4a into it, it should produce a very small image file
14:42:26 <docl>   hi tangentstorm 
14:42:35 <tangentstorm> heya :)
14:44:44 * docl is looking at the perl code now
14:49:34 * oPless reads the buffer.
14:49:49 <oPless> oooh tangentstorm …. fpga on a usb stick :D
14:50:50 <oPless> where's this greenarray jobby sold in singles?
14:51:41 <oPless> oh, there .
14:51:45 <oPless> eerk 1.8v
14:54:33 * oPless has always wanted to fiddle with fpgas and build his own cpu from scratch
14:54:42 <crc> the greenarray chips are qfn, so soldering by hand may be problematic :(
14:54:54 <oPless> oh there's breakoutboards :)
14:55:56 <tangentstorm> yeah.. the schmartboard guys have a video of how to do the soldering... from what i understand, their little boards have most of the solder already in place or something.
14:56:34 <crc> tangentstorm: that would help a lot
14:56:34 <oPless> that fpga would be fantastic to build for though.
14:56:59 <oPless> but heh. too many projects on at the moment.
14:57:31 <tangentstorm> oPless: i've never used that usb fgpa one
14:57:35 * crc will take a closer look at greenarrays in a few months
14:57:42 <tangentstorm> i think docl found that... i have this: http://papilio.cc/
14:58:01 <tangentstorm> but i don't know how to use it yet. it's still in the box :)
14:58:50 <tangentstorm> crc: you can also run the simulator, which comes with colorforth... assuming you can cope with colorforth :)
15:00:21 <tangentstorm> https://plus.google.com/115310700190572540735/posts <- animation of the simulator from colorforth
15:00:55 <tangentstorm> the way those machines work... you only talk to one node in the array directly.
15:01:00 <docl> tangentstorm: I think I see what your code is doing. neat!
15:01:13 <tangentstorm> thanks :)
15:01:29 <tangentstorm> each node in a greenarray can talk to its neighbors, or if it's on the edge, you can wire some device into it
15:02:10 <tangentstorm> so what you have to do is have your pc talk to one of the nodes, and basically write a little "virus" that carries any code you want from neighbor to neighbor
15:02:51 <tangentstorm> the chips have a mode where you can basically set the instruction pointer to a port instead of to ram
15:03:49 <tangentstorm> so.. what i'm trying to do with https://github.com/sabren/b4/blob/master/b4a/ngaro.b4a is provide that same ability for ngaro
15:05:23 <oPless> what is "b4" ?
15:05:38 <crc> tangentstorm: I could cope with colorforth if the keyboard interface is qwerty or dvorak. I never was able to get the keyboard interface in the original colorforth.
15:06:43 <tangentstorm> oPless: it was going to be a forth dialect, until i found retro... now maybe it's a bootloader/bootstrapper for retroforth? :)
15:07:42 <tangentstorm> crc: yeah. the current version from greenarrays has a qwerty mode enabled by default. it's still completely crazy though :)
15:08:08 <oPless> yeah, I was going to make a tiny VM before I ran across this (actually I've half written three or four, and I get distracted a lot so they rarely get finished)
15:08:33 <oPless> hence my dirty C# port of the java
15:08:38 <oPless> version
15:08:47 <tangentstorm> <- never once got distracted by anything ;)
15:08:59 <oPless> haha
15:09:18 <oPless> damn you tangentstorm, I want to fiddle about with fpgas now
15:10:12 <tangentstorm> the other use cases for this thing are a) emulate other virtual machines dynamically in retro (esp. python and some public domain pascal machines)
15:10:36 <tangentstorm> b) provide an implementation of meta.rx for bootstrapping retro without retro
15:12:24 <tangentstorm> i was thinking c) a UTF-8 decoder too but i'm kind of thinking it may be simple enough to do that in plain assembly language
15:12:39 <tangentstorm> ngaro assembly i mean
15:17:06 <tangentstorm> ... the reason it doesn't work yet is that i have no way to make a forward reference in the assembler :/
15:23:33 <tangentstorm> i think that if the very first jump calls a routine that queries the image size and jumps to the end of the image - 2, then when you're done with the code you can leave an area that's just full of instructions to go back and patch all the forward references
15:24:22 <tangentstorm> when it's done, it clears that memory out for use as the input buffer
15:25:02 <tangentstorm> and updates byte 0 to the start of the freshly compiled interpreter
15:25:42 <tangentstorm> so you basically leave a trail for ngaro to follow so it can finish the compilation itself the first time it boots
15:26:07 <tangentstorm> and then all your compilers for whatever language you want are simple one pass compilers
17:41:09 <oPless> http://pastebin.com/Uv42NNAy woot.
17:44:55 <docl> cool :)
18:11:46 <oPless> just implemented the devices in experimental too.
18:12:04 <oPless> no idea if they work at all though
18:19:15 <oPless> http://pastebin.com/aJ0VFyZ3
18:19:25 <oPless> enough for tonight methinks
18:19:54 <oPless> ack, 2:20am
18:20:07 <docl> nice
18:20:15 <docl> can it do tcp stuff?
18:21:43 <oPless> allegedly. yes, I just implemented the devices added in http://code.google.com/p/retro-language/source/browse/#git%2Fvm%2Fexperimental%2FCSharp%253Fstate%253Dclosed
18:22:12 <docl> cool
18:22:21 <oPless> there's a few things I need to sort out too
18:22:43 <oPless> but it's enough to boot an image up
18:26:11 <oPless> I might even be able to port this back to *cough* java
18:26:59 <oPless> and have identical implementations on both platforms.
18:28:05 <oPless> would be nice to deploy to android and appspot
19:05:24 <tangentstorm> oPless: what am I looking at? a c# version with your pluggable devices?
19:05:34 <oPless> ja
19:05:45 <oPless> and it's 3am, damnit
19:06:58 <tangentstorm> very cool... makes me want to get it running in unity3d :)
19:07:01 <tangentstorm> get some sleep!
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