[svfig-announce] Meeting March 28, 2009

Thu Mar 26 00:42:13 GMT 2009

--- SVFIG Meeting March 28, 2009  ---

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I'm considering discontinuing the email announcement,  eliminating what 
has become a redundant copy of the web version.  Maybe I could just send
out a two-line email with the date of the meeting and a link to the 
agenda.
Any comments?  forther_at_comcast.net

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Stanford will be our regular venue.

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Please note that the times are not cast in concrete!  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!

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

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COMING SOON:
EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CONFERENCE --- THIS COMING WEEK!!!
STANFORD UNIV. COOL PRODUCTS EXPO

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AGENDA
10:00 --- COFFEE AND A CHAT

10:15 --- eFORTH SYSTEM IN C --- CH Ting
"I think I can build an eForth system in C using the "fcode" approach, 
assuming that memory is addressed only in bytes. Forth words will be 
compiled in bytes. Often used words will be one-byte tokens. Less used 
words will be preceeded with a extension token from F0-FF. I am not sure 
that I will be able to demonstrate a working system, but I will present 
whatever I have finished by the meeting."

11:40 --- LUNCH
To avoid the "noon lemming effect" we'll go to lunch a little early.

13:00 --- Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Random Access

13:22 --- Mach2/Forth: THE ULTIMATE HARDWARE DEBUGGING TOOL ON THE 
PLANET --- Rick Miley (TENTATIVE TIME --- MAY NEED TO BE MOVED)
"I will talk about how fast we could develop Macintosh videos boards 
using Mach2/Forth. We were making products at a rate of one a week. We 
could debug hardware and make scope triggers 100 times faster than C or 
assembly."

"I also used Mach2/Forth to send my first a fax. It was a picture of a 
fish. It got us funded. The fax specifications in 1988 were CCITT 
gibberish. They were so cryptic I had to pound on a horrible Rockwell 
chip for six months. I must have called my fax machine 1000 times. We 
had no test equipment."

"The fax company was Global Village which ultimately went public in 1994 
with a market cap of $200M." - Rick Miley
"I will talk about how fast we could develop Macintosh videos boards 
using Mach2/Forth. We were making products at a rate of one a week. We 
could debug hardware and make scope triggers 100 times faster than C or 
assembly."

"I also used Mach2/Forth to send my first a fax. It was a picture of a 
fish. It got us funded. The fax specifications in 1988 were CCITT 
gibberish. They were so cryptic I had to pound on a horrible Rockwell 
chip for six months. I must have called my fax machine 1000 times. We 
had no test equipment."

"The fax company was Global Village which ultimately went public in 1994 
with a market cap of $200M."

14:46 --- Break

15:12 --- FORTH, SOLFEGE, MIDI AND ME --- Masa Kasahara
"I can spend probably about 20 minutes to talk about what I'm planning 
to demonstrate at Cool Product Expo coming up on April 8, 2009 at 
Stanford.  The item I will demonstrate is a program, which sings Solfege 
for the incoming MIDI signal to help Music Education together with the 
book I have recently completed."
(note the above quote has been slightly photo-shopped for my own 
nefarious purposes)

15:45 --- OOP, UML and ASTRONOMY --- John E. Harbold
"I could give a talk, without slides, about the object-oriented 
paradigm, Executable UML, and how I applied it to analyze the 
requirements of how astronomy is done."
(TENTATIVE, WE'RE HAVING TROUBLE CLOSING THE LOOP, MAY GET PUSHED OUT TO 
APRIL OR AFTER)

Leftover time --- ENGINEERING TV
http://engineeringtv.com/
Fifty engineering topic channels. Four new episodes per week.  It worked
last time, and some of the stuff is pretty cool!

16:00 --- ADJORN

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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!

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

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Coming to SVFIG:
* Bring speaker suggestions TO EVERY MEETING!

* PLANNING FORTH DAY 2009 - EVERY MEETING

* Update on IntellaSys Chips - John Rible
The chips John Rible will be selling to SVFIG are in test now and
perhaps he'll be at the meeting to give us an update.

* PowerMOPS Demo --- still looking for a volunteer, if nobody steps 
forward I'll do it --- Kevin Appert

* Prototyping with QFP Parts - Kevin Appert
"I saw an article in the September 2008 issue of Circuitous Cellar
entitled "Prototyping with QFP Parts". If someone tells me "that sounds
interesting" I'll break out the article into a few PowerPoint (or the
Open Office Impress equivalent) charts and traipse through it. "

* Engineering TV
http://engineeringtv.com/
Fifty engineering topic channels. Four new episodes per week.
We have to try this out to see if Stanford's WIFI will keep up.

* Andy Korsak has been working on accessing sound cards from
Forth for amateur radio applications.  His preliminary
work is posted at the Win32Forth Yahoo group under
files/users/korsak.  Membership is required to see the files.
If you don't want to jump through the hoops, Dave has posted
a recent version of the files here:
   <<<http://www.forth.org/svfig/SoundCardIO.zip>>>

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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

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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.

Go to the Stanford links, Google maps has no idea where Terman is!

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.