Forth Day 2011 Meeting Notes

Compiled by Dave Jaffe

Contributions from Kevin Appert and others

Forth Day photos and videos


08:15

Coffee

08:30

Chairman's Welcome - George Perry

08:35

The Year in Review - Kevin Appert

Slides - 272 Kb pdf file

08:45

From Harvard to Princeton at Stanford: eForth as an Arduino Sketch - CH Ting
"AVR microcontrollers are based on the Harvard architecture, with separate program and data memory spaces. C is also based on this architecture. Forth, however, is based on the Princeton architecture, i.e., a von Neumann machine, with a unified memory space for both program and data. In this eForth, implemented as an Arduino Sketch, I am imposing a Princeton architecture virtual machine on a Harvard processor with a Harvard architecture programming language. Of course, in a virtual machine, you can do anything. You just make it work."

Slides - 191 Kb pdf file

09:05

C Macros for Ardurino eForth - John E. Harbold
John discussed his efforts to use C macros to construct Arduino eForth's dictionary.

Slides - 75 Kb pdf file

09:25

My First True Home-built Computer: The Kestrel-2 - Samuel A. Falvo II
"My first attempt at FPGA development, the Kestrel-2 finally realizes a life-long dream I've had -- to build my own home computer from scratch. I followed in the footsteps of the Jupiter ACE, but with a significant difference: it's Forth all the way down to its J1 core processor."

Kestral-2 Repository

09:55

Break

10:10

Forth on the Cortex-M1 FPGA Development Kit - Leon Wagner
This presentation describes the instantiation of an ARM Cortex-M1 CPU core on an Altera Cyclone III FPGA and the development of a simple Forth application to run on it. The CPU core used here is the ARM Cortex-M1 FPGA Development Kit. The Altera Quartus II environment is used to build the ARM Cortex-M1 system, including memory, embedded peripherals, and a debug interface for the Forth environment. SwiftX-ARM is used to develop and interactively test a simple program on the newly instantiated CPU core in the FPGA.

Slides - 107 Kb pdf file
Forth on the ARM Cortex-M1 FPGA Development Kit

10:40

Doit - A Micro-controller Forth - Dave Wyland
Dave described Doit, a subroutine-threaded Forth with a simple interrupt system for microcontrollers such as the Arduino (i.e. Atmel AtMega328P, etc.). New features discussed included integrated scoping of local and global variables and a hybrid block micro-file system using the internal flash.

Slides - xx Kb pdf file

11:00

NativeClient Forth in Chrome - Brad Nelson
NativeClient Forth allows constrained x86 machine code to run inside the Chrome web browser. A Forth version designed to run inside NaCl was presented including a discussion of its internal implementation and of NativeClient in general.

Slides on Google
Slides - 230 Kb pdf file

11:20

Forth Haiku - Brad Nelson
What can Forth say in 17 words? Quite a lot actually.

Forth Haiku is a web application for sharing small Forth programs that generate colorful images, animation, and now sound. A brief description of the Haiku vocabulary, its implementation on top of Javascript, WebGL, and Web Audio was presented, followed by a survey of interesting, aesthetic, and colorful Haiku submissions from SVFIG members and others.

Slides on Google
Slides - 68.7 Kb pdf file

11:30

Gameduino's Forth Coprocessor - James Bowman
Last year at Forth Day, James introduced his J1 Forth core. This year, he discussed more about Gameduino, the FPGA-based videogame "shield" for the Arduino (or anything else with an SPI interface) which uses the J1 core to run Forth.

11:45

Forth, the Really Useful Engine - Gary Feierbach
Gary talked about several areas in which Forth has proved very useful.

Slides - 177 Kb pdf file

12:15

Replicating the Canon Cat and IAI Swyft and SwyftCard - John 'Sandy' Bumgarner
Sandy talked about the Canon Cat, IAI Swyft, and SwyftCard.

12:30

Lunch
In keeping with Forth Day's annual tradition, "Chef" CH Ting catered a tasty BBQ lunch.

13:30

Hands on GreenArrays - Greg Bailey & other GreenArray employees
Greg gave a short briefing on the progress of GreenArrays in the past year and a glimpse of its plans for the next. The room was reconfigured into a group of separate stations at which hands-on experience with GreenArrays hardware and software was available to all attendees. Various projects were set up and demonstrated. This familiarized attendees with this technology and provided them with a personal experience. This "hands-on" time was unstructured - the stations in the room presented attendees with a chance to select the topics of greatest interest to them from a "buffet" of opportunities.

16:00

Fireside Chat - Chuck Moore

17:00

Adjourn

17:45

Dinner at Su Hong - Menlo Park


Other items:

Forth
Creole Forth as a scripting language - Joseph M. O'Connor
FIGnition - A hobby / educational retro type computer that runs Fig Forth
FIGnition FLINT is a stripboard build of the simple computer
Computers
Software
app-running browser plugin
Hardware
Forth Programming Books
Articles
Stores
Robots
Games
Companies
Forth Jobs - submitted by Dennis Ruffer
Senior Software Engineer - Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates, Inc. - Gloucester, MA
Clinical Engineering Technician III - Yale New Haven Hospital - New Haven, CT
Controls Engineer - Randstad Engineering - Taylor, MI
Course Lectures
People
GreenArrays
Meetings
Videos
Other

Meeting Announcement

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