KX10LYC0@TWNITRI1.BITNET (06/10/91)
Hello Forth man:
I had joined this group since 16 Apr 91, and got lots of Forth news,
concepts, events from it. I had found that most of the people in this group
just talked about the eForth, TILE, ZEN, etc. All these Forth had been
implemented on diverse computers. Frankly speaking, I almost never heard that
Forthes before. This might due to my little experience on Forth. But it will
alos imply that to most users whom use IBM PC, Apple Mac, Sun, HP, DEC,
Intergraph workstations would know little about Forth. Of course, you can say
that most Forth packages can be obtained & executed on the above machines.
But for most users they would rather buy Lotus, DBASE, Pagemaker, Interleaf,
SunVideo, SYBASE C, GNU C, etc. than polyForth, 68K Forth, etc. The reason is
that Forth seems useless to them, cause Forth doesn't have any special
features to attract them to buy it.
But now, - OPEN BOOT PROM -, the Sun's PROM version of Forth might change
the Forth insane situation to a more positive position.
Sun had installed the OPEN BOOT PROM on its SBus product machines from
desktop workstations (ex. SAPRCstation 1, 1+, IPC, 2, etc.) to network server
machines (ex. Sun 4/***). All these computers have a PROM-based Forth system!!!
Think about this!!!!!
Sun is the greatest manufacture in workstation market (about 30%), and it
had shipped over 500,000 SPARCstations. This would indicate that over 500,000
Forth systems are available to Sun (or clone) users. Jesus, 500,000, what a
great number to Forth!
I believe from now on, OPEN BOOT PROM will be the first impression of
Forth to many Sun workstaion users. They might don't know L&P F83, figForht,
polyForth, ZEN, etc. But they will know the OPEN BOOT PROM!
From OPEN BOOT PROM, the users will see the characteristics of Forth and
applaused for its excellent performance.
This is the first time that Forth binded together to a dominant computer.
You can't see Forth on IBM BIOS, Apple Mac ROM, or HP, DEC machines. But now,
turn on your SPARCstation and you will enter the Forth world!
But I just wonder why so few people of this group talk about OPEN BOOT
PROM? God, when everybody outside this group just talking about OPEN BOOT PROM
- new Forth era, the group still doesn't be conscious about it!
If the FIG can use this opportinuity to promote Forth (or OPEN BOOT PROM),
I think it will be a good chance to absorb many users to Forth. Publishing the
books/papers about OPEN BOOT PROM, hold the conferences/meetings about OPEN
BOOT PROM. Just do anything which is helpful to diffuse OPEN BOOT PROM (or
Forth).
Chuck Moore is the Forth father, Henry Laxen & Michael Perry are the
contribuator to F83, and Mitch Bradley is the soul of OPEN BOOT PROM!
There are Nobel Prize for advanced scientists, ACM Turing Award for
distinguished computer engineers, why FIG grant a Chuck Moore Award to whom
has great contribution to Forth. I will nominate Mr. Bradley to contest this
honor for his steady promote of OPEN BOOT PROM when this award is possible.
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Yin-Chih Lin
Bitnet: KX10LYC0@TWNITRI1
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