About TurboForth

TurboForth is a fast Forth system on a cartridge for the TI-99/4A Home Computer. TurboForth provides a fast, efficient, and easy to use development environment for the TI-99/4A.

Until now, the only way to get fast code to run on the TI-99/4A was to code in C or Assembly Language. If you are familiar with this routine, you will know that this involves:

1) Load editor
2) Write/edit code
3) Save code
4) Exit editor
5) Load assembler
6) Assemble the code
7) Reset
8) Load the code
9) Run it
10) Errors? Goto 1

Not any more. Say goodbye to tortuous development cycles. Just type your code in at the keyboard and TurboForth will run it, immediately, at machine code speed (or, very nearly). Code can be saved in blocks for loading later. A built in editor makes editing your code easy and straightforward. Due to the built in editor, and the way Forth both interprets and compiles Forth code, you can use TurboForth as both a programming language and script language, *simultaneously*.

TurboForth Features:

Fast execution - about as fast as you can go on a TI without using machine code
F83 Compliant
Built-in source code editor
Indirect Threaded Code for code compactness
31K of RAM free - TurboForth only uses 700 bytes of CPU RAM
Supports 40 column text mode
Supports 80 column text mode - including the editor (V9938/58 video card or F18A video chip required)
Supports 32 column text mode
32 sprites
SPRMOV can move all your sprites with one instruction
256 patterns available for sprites (separate from the ASCII character set)
256 ASCII patterns available
True lower case character set
Speech supported - both from the Speech Synthesizer built in ROM or raw speech data
Speech is interrupt driven - your program runs while the Speech Synthesizer is talking. TurboForth handles streaming the data to the Speech Synthesizer for you
Supports blocks files up to 1MB
Blocks live in VDP memory, not CPU memory, leaving all of RAM free for your code
Up to 6 blocks in memory at one time
Built in block cache - TurboForth will not load a block if it's already in memory
Supports generic File I/O (Display, Variable, Internal, Fixed, Relative etc)
Up to 3 files open at once
Built in support for writing applications that use the AMS and SAMS 1MB memory card
Support code available on disk, adding the following features:
- TMS9900 Forth-based Assembler
- 32-bit arithmetic
- Floating point arithmetic
- Block import/export tools
- Decompiler
- and more...
Compatible with TI Disk controllers, Myarc Disk controllers, RAM Disks, hard disk drives (IDE and SCSI), CF7, CF7A, CF7A+ and nanoPEB
Online support from the author of TurboForth and other Forth guru's via the TurboForth mailing list at http://tinyurl.com/turboforth
Online TurboForth turtorials via YouTube coming soon (check out http://www.youtube.com/user/ForthFreak)
Book currently in development (Using TurboForth) - sold seperately
Free updates (not including postage). Just return your EPROM for the latest version with return postage and we'll do the rest!

You can download TurboForth for free for most TI-99/4A Emulators. You can also download the EPROM image if you want to make your own cartridge. TurboForth cartridges are also sold on eBay from time to time (depending on the availablity of PCBs - keep an eye out).