May 2008 Meeting Notes

Compiled by Dave Jaffe

Contributions from Kevin Appert and others

10:30

Coffee and a Chat

10:40

Forth Day 2008
Suggest a speaker or volunteer to speak!

11:00

SP2 - Hardware, Software, and so: Forth - John Rible
The Extensible SP2 FPGA Forth Processor illustrates hardware as well as software factoring. We'll wander through the layers and maybe run some code. Note: the hardware platform is Actel's low power Igloo $350 demo board.

Noon

Lunch
Some folks bring their lunch, some will eat on-campus or nearby.

13:30

Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, Random Access

14:00

Cool Stuff at the Maker Faire & Babbage Engine - Dave Jaffe
Dave will describe, through photos, some of the devices and sights that impressed him at this month's Maker Faire and show some images he took of the Babbage Engine at the Computer History Museum.

Slides - 3.45 Mb PDF file

15:00

Midi Controller - Michael Montvelishsky
Michael demonstrated a stand-alone midi controller running on a SeaForth microcontroller.

16:00

Adjourn

Other items:

Forth

colorForth for Windows by Roman Pavlyuk

Other

Here's a short clip of the Gunn High School robot in action. This was an entry in this year's USFIRST Robotics Contest. It's mostly remote control with a little bit of "autonomous" operation at the beginning. The computer and RF link are supplied to the contestants along with a description of the tasks to be performed.

Second Life Tech Museum - description - visit.