py65816 VS LiaraForth

There are several Forth versions for the 65816 that I've found online. Some are specialized to specific hardware but can be modified. Michael Guidero's OF816 is designed to be easily ported to new systems. I got it running on my 65816 emulator without much problem. It handles banked memory and uses a good subset of 65816 features.

That's how I learned the 65816 and Python at the same time. Here's my 65816 enhancement to py65. I took longer than I thought it would (mostly writing the tests to validate the emulation).

I found some alternative tools, but really wanted to continue using what I was familiar with, so that took some programming work as I couldn't find any options for my current tools. I've already written about my work on a py65 based 65816 emulator. I've refined it a bit and created a version that doesn't require modifications to py65. It's available on my py65816 GitHub. With that down, I only needed a 65816 listing file.

Scot W. Stevenson's Liara Forth is designed to run on a W65C265SXB development board but could be modified to work on other hardware. I modified the binary file to run on my emulator for testing purposes. I believe it runs only in bank 0 and it doesn't particularly take advantage of many 65816 features.

I got my w65c265sxb board up and running with the help of the A Most Very Unofficial Guide to the W65C265SXB and Liara Forth. I found it very helpful to have a fully functioning program to start learning the 65816's new modes.

It was a bigger project than I thought, but I was able to get a version of Liara Forth, by Scot W. Stevenson, running last night (Liara Forth was designed for the W65C265SXB development board which has a 65C816 at its core).