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From: dxf <dxforth@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Re: Word name storage quirk in VAX fig-Forth
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:34:05 +1000
Organization: i2pn2 (i2pn.org)
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On 17/04/2025 9:31 am, David Meyer wrote:
> It occurred to me that another factor in this is that the VAX-11 OS used
> 7-bit ASCII as its character set, so perhaps terminals and printers of
> that time would just print the character indicated by the lower 7 bits
> of each byte they were sent, ignoring the high bit. So I am seeing
> munged characters because I'm using equipment that looks at all 8 bits
> for character codes?

This got me interested.  In FigForth for CP/M-80 bit 7 is *not* cleared.
Thus the full 8 bits is sent to the BIOS console output with the expectation
bit 7 will is cleared in the BIOS.  DRI's spec for BIOS CONOUT appears to
require this.  OTOH I know BIOS's that didn't do that as it would restrict
console capability.

Ideally FigForth should allow 8-bit EMITs and ID. rewritten to use a
127 AND EMIT loop instead of TYPE .