[svfig-announce] Forth Day, November 21, 2009

Kevin Appert forther at comcast.net
Wed Nov 18 01:32:05 GMT 2009 

--- SVFIG Forth Day, Saturday, November 21, 2009  ---
_______________________________________________

We'll be on the fifth floor of Terman Engineering Center --- Room 556
Directions and map links are below.

There are two buildings named Terman on campus so be careful. The
Searchable Map has the one you want as "TERMAN (FREDERICK E) ENGRG
CENTER  (04-700)  380 PANAMA MALL"
The Official SVFIG Announcement Editor's Parking Lot recommendation is
the lot near the intersection of Teresa St and Morris Way.

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AGENDA
(Please go to website for the version with lots of web links!!!)
<<<http://www.forth.org/svfig/next.html>>>

08:30 --- Coffee and a Chat

09:00 --- Welcome - George Perry
George, the SVFIG Chairman, will offer a few words of welcome and 
include some announcements about books and t-shirts.

 >>>>> FORTH APPLICATIONS <<<<<

09:10 --- eForth in C - CH Ting
This is by far the simplest Forth ever written in C. Existing versions 
of Forth in C are all complicated by C language requirements and the 
underlying operating system limitations. This implementation is based on 
a very simple Forth Virtual Machine written in C, which executes Forth 
words in a dictionary. This dictionary is constructed by an eForth 
metacompiler and inserted into a byte memory array in C. The Forth 
Machine can be quite simple, with as few as 31 primitives, or can be 
optimized to have 256 primitives.

09:40 --- PACE FIG-Forth - David Kilbridge
David Kilbridge was the implementer of the original FIG-Forth model for 
the PACE processor. He will provide a little insight into this processor 
and his implementation of the FIG model on it in the early days of the 
Forth Interest Group.

10:00 --- Resurrecting FIG-Forth through Simulation - Eric Smith
Eric will give a brief review of his work porting PACE FIG-Forth to his 
simulated IMP-16 and eventually to real hardware. He'll describe the 
progress he's made since his May talk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMP-16

10:15 --- Overview of the Forth Foundation Library - John E. Harbold
John will discuss code which makes use of the Forth equivalent of a C++ 
Class Library. The Forth Foundation Library (FFL) is a general purpose 
Forth library whose main purpose is to make it easier to develop 
applications. Examples include a Finite State Machine (FSM) and Dynamic 
Strings.

10:30 --- Break

10:40 --- Cheap, Simple, and Functional - Bob Nash
Using inexpensive hardware and free development tools, 
professional-quality, high-performance instrumentation can be designed 
quickly. This presentation will describe several of these development 
environments and show instruments that have been built with them.

11:10 --- Icon Forth - Brad Nelson
A picture is said to be worth a thousand words. Icon Forth replaces 
traditional Forth words with images and the dictionary is a 
collaboratively edited online database.

11:40 --- Discussion of a Native Forth for a NetBook - Sandy Bumgarner
"Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a cute, inexpensive, and complete 
computer that runs only Forth? Ah, nothing but you, Forth, and the 
hardware! Such a system could be built with an ASUS Eee PC and perhaps 
other netbooks. Let's talk about it ..."

12:10 --- A Moment of Remembrance and Celebration for Dave Boulton - 
Sandy Bumgarner and Cousin Bette

12:30 --- Lunch in Gibbons Grove - Catered by CH Ting
Adjacent to Terman Engineering Center

 >>>>> FORTH ENGINES <<<<<

13:30 --- Forth System on a Programmable Chip - Leon Wagner
"I will build a CFV1CORE_ALTERA System on a Programmable Chip (SOPC) 
design in the Altera Quartus II environment, program the design into a 
Cyclone III FPGA, and then interactively develop some Forth code to run 
on the newly instantiated core."

"The CFV1CORE_ALTERA, available free of charge from IPextreme, is the 
same V1 ColdFire processor core implemented in Freescale's MCF51QExx 
devices, but delivered as an SOPC Builder design optimized for the 
Altera Cyclone III FPGA. The V1 ColdFire system bus has been adapted to 
the Altera Avalon system interface for the CFV1CORE_ALTERA implementation."

     IPextreme CFV1CORE_ALTERA
     Altera Cyclone III Starter Kit (used in demo)
     SwiftX

14:10 --- Venture Forth Toys - Dennis Ruffer
"While working at the IntellaSys Radio and RF division in Colorado, I 
came up with some plug-ins for their VentureForth compiler. I will give 
a brief introduction to them and explain why I found them to be useful."

     VentureForth Compiler Plug-ins
     Dennis' Linkedin profile

14:40 --- IntellaSys Hearing Aid Project - Michael Montvelishsky
The bleeding edge of hearing aid technology is arcane and 
counter-intuitive. Michael will pull back the curtain and reveal the 
secrets behind the DSP black magic. This may be the most remarkable 
real-world application of the IntellaSys SeaForth processor.

15:20 --- New Code on the New Hardware - Jeff Fox
Jeff will give a live interactive demonstration of the colorForth 
tethered IDE as well as take up topics from his blog and show off this 
year's chips.

16:00 --- Square Root Routine for the c18 (s40 CPU) - John Rible
John will discuss his colorforth implementation of a 32-bit square root 
routine for the c18 (s40 cpu) and talk about the eForth interface he 
used to test it.

16:30 --- Fireside Chat - Chuck Moore

17:30 --- Adjourn

17:50 --- Dinner Banquet
Tentatively at Su Hong
1039 El Camino Real
Menlo Park
650/323-6852

_______________________________________________
Please note that the times listed above are precise but not
accurate.  We might go a little long or short on any agenda
item.  If you're desperate to see something at a particular
time, please let us know!  Remember that there are bugs in
any non-trivial SVFIG meeting announcement.
_______________________________________________

The schedule above may be reformatted or line-justified but
please transmit verbatim or not at all.   Any font you like is
alright with me.

No Newsgroup posts or other media distribution this month please!

_______________________________________________

Wireless Internet access is anticipated (though not guaranteed) at
Stanford, so bring your wifi-enabled laptop.

_______________________________________________

Coming to SVFIG:
This meeting is <<<FORTH DAY in November<<<
There will be another one in 2010!

* Bring speaker suggestions TO EVERY MEETING!

* Mitch Bradley's Forth in C (somebody needs to volunteer)

* Furthering the Cause of Forth - John Rible
IntellaSys has imploded, or something.  We'd be pleased to hear about
John's new outreach project when formulated.

* Engineering TV
http://engineeringtv.com/
Fifty engineering topic channels. Four new episodes per week.

* BOTBASH 2000 --- Video
A cheepie video of  a May 2000 robot rumble in Mesa Arizona from these
guys:   http://www.battlebots.com/

_______________________________________________

Check the SVFIG web site at http://www.forth.org/svfig/
for last minute changes to this schedule.
The most up-to-date meeting information is at
http://www.forth.org/svfig/next.html

Many thanks to our wonderful Webmaster, Dave Jaffe.

Preliminary agenda along with schedule updates and
discussion may frequently be found on the SVFIG email list.
To subscribe send email to geoperry_at_gmail.com

Please let us know if this isn't your preferred email address for the
SVFIG-Announce mailing list.  Thanks for your patience.

Please suggest a speaker or present at a SVFIG meeting.

Please do not attempt to reply to svfig-announce at ...
send instead to forther_at_comcast.net
_______________________________________________

NAVIGATIONAL ADVICE

The Official SVFIG Announcement Editor's Parking Lot recommendation is
the lot near the intersection of Teresa St and Morris Way.

Terman Engineering Center can be found on these maps - just search for
Terman: (going to maps.google.com gives an erroneous result)

http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/

Searchable Stanford Campus Map:  http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/

There is open parking on weekends. Park in any A or C or metered space,
no coins needed even if there's a meter there.The Official SVFIG
Announcement Editor's Parking Lot recommendation is the lot near the
intersection of Teresa St and Morris Way.

Go to the Stanford links, GOOGLE MAPS HAS NO IDEA where Terman is!

The building's door may be locked, there will be a number to call posted
after the meeting starts and we will come down and check once in a while.

Once you reach Terman, take the elevator to the 5th floor. Walk across
the foyer and up the ramp just to the left of the glassed-in office.
Room 556 is at the top of the ramp - entrance on the left.
_______________________________________________

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