SVFIG
Next Meeting -
Saturday, July 26th

at the home of
CH Ting
400 Arlington Way
Menlo Park


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Final Meeting Agenda for July


Due to the closure of Cogswell College this summer, SVFIG will not be able to enjoy our normal meeting rooms.

July's SVFIG meeting will be held in the home of CH Ting at 400 Arlington Way in Menlo Park.

Directions: Ting's home is between 101 and Middlefield Road, between Willow and Marsh Roads. Get off HWY 101 at Willow Road to the west. At the third traffic light, turn right onto Coleman. At the second street circle, turn left. That's Arlington Way. See Google Maps for the exact location.

Broadband Internet access will not be available.


10:00 --- Coffee and a Chat

10:15 --- Forth Day 2008
Suggest a speaker or volunteer to speak!

10:30 --- Menu System for Digital Storage Oscilloscope - CH Ting
"I will present a new menu control system for the digital storage oscilloscope. I hope that I will get the ADC to work by the July meeting so that I will be able to demonstrate it. However, I may not be able to get that far. But, I will definitely get the menu control system done, and show it on the Olimex SAM7256 board."

Noon --- Lunch
A BBQ lunch will be provided by our host in his yard.

13:00 --- Introductions, announcements, rumors, and random access

13:10 --- Iron Man Museum Tour Planning
A headcount will be taken of those interested in going to the Hendy Iron Works Museum in Sunnyvale. It is open to the public by appointment only. A tentative date for the tour is Monday, August 11th around lunchtime.

13:15 --- Interesting Items - Volume 11 - Dave Jaffe
Dave will continue his survey of interesting newly-introduced microcontrollers, I/O peripherals, sensors, products, and gadgets that can provide useful and unique capabilities to Forth embedded systems. If anyone has come across anything that fits this category, pass them along to him for inclusion in his presentation.

14:00 --- Audible Computing, Part 4: Searching for the Perfect Platform - Masa Kasahara
In Part 4, Masa will talk about his quest for the perfect machine to implement his ideas. It should be small enough to be portable and not too expensive, either. What do you think he came up with?

14:30 --- Dynamic Memory Reconfiguration for eP32 - CH Ting
"An embedded system must boot from ROM, but for speed and ease of programming, it is better to run it in RAM. I tried to emulate the ROM-RAM reconfiguration used in some of the ARM7 chips where physical ROM memory is in block 1, physical RAM memory is in block 2, and block 0 is virtual memory which can be dynamically mapped to either block 1 or block 2. This scheme was tested on the Altera NIOS II Board and is the ideal architecture for embedded Forth systems."


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 to SVFIG on ForthDay:

  • IRC using wget in GForth - George Perry

Coming to SVFIG in the future (hopefully):

  • 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.

Please register your interest for these topics:

  • Viewing of Analog by Design shows hosted by Bob Pease - list of shows
  • The world's second Babbage Engine is coming to town. Maybe we can have a meeting at the Computer History Museum to take a look.
  • Review and discussion of recent postings on news:comp.lang.forth
  • Review and discussion of interesting Forth projects and many files at the Yahoo Win32Forth Group

Off the table:

  • There has been a lack of interest for a presentation by a representative from Gumstix.
  • There has been no success in contacting the author of Propeller Forth - written locally by Cliff L. Biffle
  • A tour of TechShop in Menlo Park is not planned at this time. If you would like to visit the facility, please make your own arrangements. Check out their talks, events, and instructional classes.

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

Meeting Notes