Comment by mkovach
2 days ago
I had one of these growing up, until it was replace with a Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack. Well, I kept it around until I moved into my second house.
I had TI Forth, the huge accessory box, a disk drive, the works. It was fun, I learned quite a bit and have forgotten most of the Forth that I learned.
I had a similar setup eventually with Wycove Forth -- can't remember even the existence of TI Forth. Anyway playing with that was my foot in the door to a summer job at FORTH, Inc. as a teen.
Lost all of that code because my 99 system got stolen a few years later.
Oh man!
I still booted my system up occasionally when I had it to remind myself that you didn't have to write HUGE programs to do stuff.
Now, I want to write a text adventure game again. Where are my Turbo Pascal disks?
Didn't TI-Forth have a mode where it would use a 3x7 font so you could get 64 characters per line? I still have nightmares. But... you have to appreciate the work that went into it.
Really if I ever knew it existed, I've forgotten. But https://oratronik.de/atariage/TI_FORTH_Manual-2ndEd(LES).pdf says yes on page 14. General discussion at https://99er.net/tifaq2.html#TIFAQ011
(I used Wycove Forth in 40-column mode, though I have a dim memory of trying something like your 3x7 font...)
I think the TI Forth was based on L&P-83 FORTH (L&P for Laxen and Perry, the two authors.) I was in a friend's house in silly valley and met a friend-of-that-friend and started talking about tech. At some point I mentioned TI forth and L&P83 on the PC and how it was a great, simple system. He said "thank you." Turns out I was talking with Mike Perry.