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 Robotics / RCX / pbFORTH / 274
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Subject: 
RE: The pain of communicating with the RCX
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics.rcx.pbforth
Date: 
Thu, 9 Mar 2000 21:04:26 GMT
Viewed: 
5563 times
  
> In lugnet.robotics.rcx.pbforth, Ralph Hempel writes:
> > > The power of Forth lies in the ease with which a system can be built and
> > Good. I'm glad your on-side so far :-)
> 
> Does that count as `tempted by the dark side' or `seen the light'? :)

Depends on which side of the fence you are on...

> > > 1) How do you ship forth code as text to the RCX? Downloading an srec file
> > You are right. I have found that getting a reliable connection is very
> > dependent on ambient light, the voltage of the RCX batteries, and the tower • itself.
> > Try to use the tower in NEAR mode so that it does not swamp the RCX receiver.
> 
> I tried near and far mode, several distances, putting the tower and the RCX
> under a dark cloth... Everything I could think of except putting 'em where
> the sun don't shine:)

Hmmm. This is not good. I have ghad very good success with CRT, but I'm
going to try a more general solution with Tcl.

> > I'm trying to get my Tcl GUI back in order so that we can all have a common
> > base to work with. There are so many comm programs out there that it
> > is difficult to get them all working.
> 
> I couldn't find it on the pbforth website. What exactly does it do? Anything
> we can do to help developing it?

I stopped supporting it late last year because it only worked under Windows
and I wanted a cross-platform tool. Now I have Linux on my laptop and Win98
too. I bought an old Mac6100 to try the mac platform as well.

Basically, it grabs an srec file and makes a .img (true binary) file. It then
does the upload thing to the RCX. After that, it's also a terminal that lets
you talk to the RCX.

To make it really useful, I need to add a macro capability to translate
common words into constants, and add a little XMODEM protocol. Since the
original XMODEM checksum is easy to do on the RCX, an advanced scripting
language should be up to the task, right?

> Part of the problem seems to be the variety in X-Modem flavours. Most modern
> programs aren't too fond of the real X-Modem protocol, and expect some
> newer version of it.

I hope that the Tcl script fixes this.

> > Not yet, but so far developing under Windows has not been too bad.....
> Ah, but I don't have Windows and I'm not going to install it. Not even for
> pbforth's sake:-)

I don't blame you. How are you finding pbForth developemnt otherwise? I'm
thinking of adding a direct link to the ROM math routines to improve the
math speed, as well as releasing the servo driver....

Cheers,

Ralph Hempel - P.Eng

--------------------------------------------------------
Check out pbFORTH for LEGO Mindstorms at:
<http://www.hempeldesigngroup.com/lego/pbFORTH>
--------------------------------------------------------
Reply to:      rhempel at bmts dot com
--------------------------------------------------------



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: The pain of communicating with the RCX
 
On Thu, Mar 09, 2000 at 09:04:26PM +0000, Ralph Hempel wrote: [...On a TCL program to communicate with the RCX...] (...) Uploading srec files has been without problem for me; it's uploading text that's painful. Does your program uses some protocol (...) (27 years ago, 10-Mar-00, to lugnet.robotics.rcx.pbforth)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: The pain of communicating with the RCX
 
(...) Does that count as `tempted by the dark side' or `seen the light'? :) (...) itself. (...) I tried near and far mode, several distances, putting the tower and the RCX under a dark cloth... Everything I could think of except putting 'em where (...) (27 years ago, 9-Mar-00, to lugnet.robotics.rcx.pbforth)

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