SVFIG
Next Meeting:
Saturday, October 27th
at
Cogswell College
1175 Bordeaux Dr.
Rooms 197A and 197B
Sunnyvale, CA  94089


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

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

Security Notice

When attending SVFIG meetings, please be aware that Cogswell College now locks its doors on weekends. To facilitate your entry to the building, there will be an SVFIG member stationed at the door from 9:45am to 10:15am to admit recognized SVFIG meeting attendees. If you are attending an SVFIG meeting for the first time, please bring along a printout of this agenda to identify your interest in Forth and to gain admission. If you arrive after 10:15am, there will be a telephone number posted for you to call to alert someone of your presence at the door. The front door will also be checked at intervals of 20 to 30 minutes to accommodate those without cellphones.

Do not under any circumstances allow any strangers to enter Cogswell. Those who are authorized admittance have key-cards.

October Meeting Agenda


Please contact Kevin Appert if you would like to present anything at this meeting or on ForthDay in November
forther - at- comcast.net

09:45 --- Coffee and a chat

10:15 --- Forth Day 2007 - Kevin Appert
Suggest a speaker or volunteer to speak! Time is getting short, Fortrh Day is next month!

10:45 --- What were we talking about? - All in attendance
We'll take up topics, seemingly at random, of technical or common interest. This may run into the afternoon. Some thoughts are:

Is it me or is it GNU?
The Fedora 7 live CD distributed at a previous meeting seems to fail the startup check. What's up with that?

How much is that Puppy Linux in the window?
Puppy is an older, interesting small Linux small enough to boot from a thumb drive. Are there better, more modern thumb-drive implementations? How does one find, download, and install them? How big a disk drive do you need?

The Allen Telescope Array
There is a "phased array" of 42 - 6 meter radio telescopes just north of Mount Lason. You may be able to join a car trip to tour the facility next week!

Hat Creek Radio Observatory
Allen Telescope Array
Allen Telescope Array - Wikipedia entry

What would Dilbert do?
Kevin's in the mood for a "new" laptop. Should it be the Toshiba from Surplus Computer? The Thinkpad from Tiger? Something from LapTopTek? Some other thing? You can help him decide!

How fast is it anyway?
Is Firewire faster than USB 2.0?

Password reset
Kevin has a Windows 2000 machine he's trying to reset. He'll either report on the successful method he employed or solicit advice.

Noon --- Lunch -
Some folks bring their lunch, some folks go to Togos.

13:00 --- Introductions, announcements, rumours, random access

13:30 --- Interesting Items - Volume 9 - 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 --- Online Market World Expo 2007 - Masa Kasahara
Masa attended this trade show. He will talk about the show in general and in particular legal issues surrounding the web and blogging. A discussion will follow.

15:00 --- Vintage Computer Festival - Sellam Ismail
"Sam" will stop by to preview the Vintage Computer Festival to be held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on November 3rd and 4th.

16:00 --- Adjourn

How you can help SVFIG:

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

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.

  • F#, A simple Forth System for Windows - CH Ting
    "Though F# has been around for some time, most people are not familiar with it. I would like to talk about it casually, demonstrate its user interface, and show what I did with it. It is a very simple Forth system which allows me to make the best use of Windows. I vowed to do all my software applications with it. If you want to understand the projects I worked on in the last couple of years, like P32 development system, MIDI, Mandelbrot, ARM7 eForth, GameGirl, ADUC eForth, etc., it is very helpful to know F#."

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 October or at Forth Day,
please contact Kevin Appert.

Meeting Notes