SVFIG
Saturday, February 27th
at
Stanford University
Terman Engineering Center
Room 556


Terman Engineering Center can be found on these maps - just search for Terman: Google map or Searchable Stanford Campus Map

There is open parking on weekends. Park in any A or C or metered space.

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.

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


If you would like to have meeting announcements e-mailed to you, send the message Subscribe SVFIG Meeting Agenda to: George Perry

Meeting Agenda for February


09:50 --- Coffee and a Chat

10:00 --- Revisiting Mandelbrot - CH Ting
"I started doing Mandelbrot plots 20 years ago. At that time, the computer took a long time, about 30 seconds, to render an image. It was nice, but not very interesting. Now computers are fast enough to do one plot a second. This now becomes more interesting, because I can interact with the plots. I like to use a mouse to navigate the plots, but I need help in adding a mouse interface to F#. I have put all the computation into FPU, and am quite proud of it. However, Windows steals the FPU from me and I am not sure that I have the FPU all to myself. Anyway, I will demonstrate almost interactive Mandelbrot plots."

11:48 --- Lunch
We will walk to The Treehouse by Tresidder Union. Here is the menu. We may end lunch a bit early so that we can start the afternoon session promptly.

13:00 --- Forth Coding Best Practices - Samuel A. Falvo II
Sam will share his learning experiences with Forth coding best-practices for his High-level Data Link Control (HDLC) network stack supporting his optical communications experiments.

"The HDLC stack I'm writing is far from complete, and has not yet been tested over wire links. But, the current set of unit tests suggests that it can now handle SABM, UA, and DM messages -- meaning that I can now initiate a connection request and handle success and failure, respectively."

14:00 --- Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Random Access
Topics include: A Big Laser (ABL), Embedded Systems Conference, announcement day choice, and whatever else may come up.

14:30 --- Break

14:54 --- 3D Printers & Makerbot - Eric Smith
3D printers, like the Makerbot, are the latest trend in technology. Stepper motors hum, plastic squirts, and before you know it a gimcrack or thingamabob emerges. Freshman-year engineering students are fabricating wind-turbine blades with them. Makerbots can make its own replacement parts. We will hear all about it from Eric, who has assembled one.

Makerbot
Makerbot video

16:00 --- Adjourn

How you can help SVFIG:

  • Bring your speaker and topic suggestions to every meeting!
  • Your input for and participation in next year's Forth Day is always welcomed.

Coming in March:

xx:xx --- Task Interface in Forth for eCOS - Part 2 - John E. Harbold
"I'll present the object-oriented interface to the task interface in Forth for eCOS. This will describe the way to create and manage tasks in Forth."

Possible topics for future meetings:

John James wrote FIG-Forth for the PDP-11 and The FIG Tree which evolved 
into the generic Menu Tree bulletin board system. John wrote a number of articles
in Forth Dimensions including an implementation of XModem with an interesting CRC.
The code should be online in the Forth Dimensions archive.

"XMODEM Tutorial"  John S. James
Volume 8, Issue 2, Page 9

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==================

Coming to SVFIG:

Engineering TV
Fifty engineering topic channels, four new episodes per week.

Botbash 2000 Video
A cheapie video of a May 2000 robot rumble in Mesa, AZ.

WAV File and Soundcard I/O Software Using Win32Forth - Andy Korsak
This software was written for amateur radio applications. Andy has suggested that it might be useful to look at his code in advance of his talk. Contributions to this work-in-progress would be welcomed. You can download and view his sound card software on the Win32Forth group (membership required), or here.

Solicitations for presentations and assistance:

Mitch Bradley's Forth in C
A volunteer is sought to present and demonstrate this software.

PowerMops Forth for the Mac - Kevin Appert
Kevin Appert: "Mops is an open-source, full-featured, object-oriented stand-alone programming language for Mac OS X descended from the much-beloved NEON. I now have a working installation and when I know enough to do a good demo, I’ll be doing a talk. I’d be grateful for any help and advice from anyone familiar with PowerMOPS.”

PowerMops on SourceForge

Carbon Mac Forth - Kevin Appert
Kevin Appert: "Mac Forth was the first programming language used on the bench to bring up the Mac and the first programming language with Mac API available to the public. I have substantial interest in the current version, Carbon Mac Forth and I’m hoping to do what I can to promote it. I'm unable to contact Ward McFarland, the Carbon MacForth guy. If anybody knows a good way to buy a copy, please fill me in! His email appears full and he doesn't reply. The phone number is out of service, but the website is still up. I’m hoping that if Carbon Mac Forth is now an orphan, we can make all the source and executable available on our website.

Please indicate your interest for these topics:

If you have anything you'd like to talk about in February,
please contact Kevin Appert.

Meeting Notes