Mail list dedicated to the TurboForth ROM based Forth programming environment for the vintage TI-99/4A home computer. Despite the TI-99/4A being nearly 30 years old, this is a new software application for the 4A. Developed in 2009/2010.

Both TurboForth discussion, or indeed general Forth discussion are welcome here.

TurboForth is named thus because (so far) it has proven to be much faster than other Forth languages available for the TI-99/4A.

Anyone interested in developing programs on the TI is welcome. TurboForth is tens of times faster than XB, and nearly as fast as assembly. It's powerful. And you could learn something!

TurboForth is available as:

1) A plug in ROM cartridge
2) Disk files for emulators
3) Cartridge files for emulators
4) ROM files for HSGPL card

TurboForth is developed with the ASM994A cross assembler, and Classic99 Emulator.

Features of TurboForth:

* Fast
* Supports modern Forth coding constructs:
* CASE..OF..ENDOF..ENDCASE
* VALUEs TO +TO
* CREATE DOES>
* Block based, but does not require specially formatted disks. Your blocks can live on any standard disk (e.g. RAMDisk, CF7A, Floppy) alongside other files.
* Built in block editor
* Very fast execution, comparable to assembly language. Faster than C99.
* 40 Column mode support
* 32 Column mode support
* 80 Column mode support (v9938)
* Generic File IO (read files, write files, send to printer, RS232 etc)
* Interrupt driven speech
* 32 Sprites
* All 256 ASCII characters available for redefinition
* Sprites have their own 256 patterns, separate from the character set
* Nearly all of the 32K RAM available for Forth programs (the editor etc are all built into ROM)