July 2013 Meeting Notes

Compiled by Dave Jaffe

Contributions from Kevin Appert and others

SVFIG on Google+ Hangout- long url - tinyurl

Videos - morning1 (0:47:31) - morning2 (0:39:11) - afternoon (2:42:20)

09:45

Coffee and a Chat

10:00

Olde Tyme Forth Systems - CH Ting
Ting has reactivated 8086 FIG Forth, F83-MSDOS, and FPC, on his Windows XP computer. He has also updated eForth and Zen. “It was nice to see these old Forths still working!” Ting will demonstrate them in the meeting so we can all reminisce. He will also show new electronic editions of his Systems Guide to FIG Forth, Inside F83, eForth, and Zen, all available on his website. Ting used an old version of Acrobat to add chapter bookmarks to these three books, producing an improved appearance.

Offete Bookstore

11:20

EchoLink, The Oz Machine - A Peek behind the Curtain - Bill Ragsdale - K6KN
Bill spoke about the Boy Scouts of America repeater networrk system, K2BSA

Slides - 421 Kb pdf file

11:45

An Update on Gforth Booting in eCos - John E. Harbold

11:45

Forth of July Barbeque - Chef and Host: CH Ting
We enjoyed the traditional Forth of July barbeque.

13:00

Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Gossip

13:20

Non-Forth Languages on the eP64 Processor - Samuel A. Falvo II
Sam talked briefly about some instruction set changes currently on the drawing board to the eP64 designed to better support non-Forth languages (e.g., C, and BCPL for instance).

Slides

13:50

Assembler / Disassembler for colorForth - Dennis A. Ruffer
Dennis taked about his full round-trip assembler / disassembler for colorForth.

colorForth assembler / disassembler support

14:15

Break

14:25

A Newbie Looks at Forth - Glen Worstell
... and finds some things not to his liking.
"I'd like to present my ideas about a few things that I'd like to modify before doing embedded systems projects in Forth and would like to receive feedback from the experts on reasons not to make these changes, if there are good ones."

Glen won’t consider Forth standards, as they are beyond the scope of his talk.

Slides - 277 Kb pdf file

15:10

Mecrisp Forth on Low-cost Hardware - Glen Worstell

Mecrisp runs out of the box on several platforms:

TI MSP430 Launchpad
TI ARM Cortex M4 Launchpad
STM32F4 Arm Cortex M4 Launchpad
several MSP430 and ARM Cortex microprocessors

Mecrisp is an excellent Forth implementation using subroutine-threaded code with some code optimization. The MSP430 version includes an assembler and disassembler, so 'SEE' is implemented (a great feature).

All versions can have code resident in:

core flash - can't be erased without reloading
user flash - easily erased and reprogrammed in Forth
ram - good for debugging new words

Mecrisp

Slides - 214 Kb pdf file

Random Access
Impromptu talks, amiable ambling discussions, sauntering through news:comp.lang.forth and other conversations will be offered for your amusement in the interstices if any.

15:55

Clean Up

16:00

Adjourn