SVFIG
Saturday, October 23rd
at
Stanford University
Building 550 - Room 126

SVFIG will meet at Stanford in Building 550 (aka Peterson Building). Its relationship to Terman Engineering Center (the former meeting place) can be found on these maps - Slide1 or Slide2.

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

Enter the building from Panama Mall. The door is labeled "Building 550 - Mechanical Engineering Design Group". For monthly meetings except Forth Day, Room 126 will be used. Once inside the building walk down three steps and continue straight ahead into the atrium. The meeting room is on the left.

For Forth Day, walk up the stairs just inside the doorway. Room 200 is on the left at the top of the stairs.

In the event that the building door is locked, there will either be someone on duty to let you in or a cellphone number to call. Do not ask Stanford students to let you in and do not enter the building behind students.

Temporary wireless Internet access at the meeting can be arranged by sending an email request to Dave Jaffe (dljaffe -at- stanford.edu).

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

Meeting Agenda

Kevin's Meeting Announcement for October

How you can help SVFIG:

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

Coming to Forth Day 2010:

J1: A Small Forth CPU Core for FPGAs - James Bowman
James will describe a 16-bit Forth CPU core, intended for FPGAs. The instruction set closely matches the Forth programming language, simplifying cross-compilation. Because it has higher throughput than comparable CPU cores, it can stream uncompressed video over Ethernet using a simple software loop. The entire system (source Verilog, cross compiler, and TCP/IP networking code) is published under the BSD license. The core is less than 200 lines of Verilog, and operates reliably at 80 MHz in a Xilinx Spartan(R)-3E FPGA, delivering approximately 100 ANS Forth MIPS.

Report on eZ430 Chronos Development Tool - CH Ting
"I will give a report on my tinkering on eZ430 Chronos Development Tool. My interests are on the wireless communication. I was disappointed on the IR link in Lego's MindStorm Robotic Invention. I hope to see a much better wireless link among 430's. Once I get the communication established, I will be able to control targets easily using Forth."

BBQ Lunch - CH Ting

Fireside Chat - Chuck Moore
Chuck is expected to speak to us again this year.

Update - GreenArrays

Banquet Dinner - Venue to be determined (candidates include Su Hong in Menlo Park and Hong Kong Restaurant in Mountain View)

Coming to SVFIG:

OO-vs-Relational Databases - Samuel A. Falvo II
"I would like to talk about OO-vs-relational databases and procedural programming."

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."

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 needed 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

Please indicate your interest for these topics:

Viewing of Analog by Design shows hosted by Bob Pease - list of shows
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

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

Meeting Notes