Forth Inc, the Manhattan Beach, California company that licenses the Forth programming language, which comes with its own operating environment, so that very skinny programs indeed can be developed, making it ideal for embedded applications, has come out with amulti-tasking, multi-user operating system for Harris Corp’s RTX 2000 microcontroller chip. The RTX 2000 is a 16-bit microprocessor designed specifically to run Forth efficiently. The new pF/x is optimised for real-time control applications in data communications, robotics, process control and instrumentation. PF/x can be used alongside MS-DOS on a micro using the RTX 2000 as a co-processor, and interprocessor communication is implemented automatically by pF/x via the use of mailboxes that enable the RTX 2000 to be dedicated to such as data collection while the micro is used for data analysis. PF/X is $3,350 and is part of the polyForth program development environment, which also includes integrated editor, interpreter, compiler and debugger. It is out already for Silicon Composers’ FOX Forth board and arrives this month for for the Harris RTX 2000 Demonstration Board.
