March 2008 Meeting Notes

Compiled by Dave Jaffe

Contributions from Kevin Appert and others

09:45

Coffee and a Chat

10:10

Forth Day 2008 - Kevin Appert
Suggest a speaker or volunteer to speak!

10:15

Remote USB Connectivity - John Harbold
John described how to form a virtual connection between a USB device, a remote PC, and a server. John will continue this discussion next month.

Noon

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

13:00

Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, Random Access

13:30

Interesting Items - Volume 10 - Dave Jaffe
Dave continued 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.

Slides - 413 Kb pdf file

14:00

Magnetic Recording and Ampex - Jay McKnight
Jay took us through the history of sound recording through some vintage Ampex videos.

15:00

Random Access - All in attendance
Will it be random or just pseudo-random? We always find something to talk about.

16:00

Adjourn

Other items:

Zog - C version of ficl (Forth Inspired Command Language), runs on eCos OS; eCos and Forth can be small, ZOG is under 150K with author setup: i386, floppy booting. Added words: inb, outb. Tiny description, downloads: source, floppy image.

Bytecode interpreters for tiny computers
Kragen Javier Sitaker - kragen -at- pobox.com

Build a PC So Small It'll Fit in a Drive Bay