SVFIG Saturday, August 22nd at
Stanford University Terman
Engineering Center Room 556
Terman Engineering
Center can be found on these maps - just search for Terman:
Google map or
Searchable Stanford Campus
Map
There is open parking on
weekends. Park in any A or C or metered space.
Take the elevator to the 5th
floor. Walk across the foyer and up the ramp just to the left of the glassed-in
office. Room 556 is at the top of the ramp - entrance on the left.
Wireless Internet access is
anticipated (though not guaranteed) at Stanford, so bring your wi-fi enabled
laptop.
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Meeting Agenda to: George
Perry |
Meeting Agenda for August
2009
10:00 --- Coffee and a Chat
10:14 --- Videos from July 2008
Continued That month our room at Cogswell wasn't available, so a few
members convened at Ting's meeting house in San Mateo. Masa videotaped most of
the meeting. Was Bill Ragsdale there? Dave Jaffe was there, so we'll
have a look at:
- Interesting Items - Volume 11 -
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.
11:40 --- Lunch Lunch on-campus is
most likely, but open to discussion. To avoid the "noon lemming effect", we'll
leave a little early.
13:00 --- Introductions, Announcements,
Rumors, and Random Access
13:23 --- Computing Logarithms and
Exponentials - Eric Smith The most common algorithms to compute
approximations of transcendental functions (including exponentials and
logarithms) use polynomial approximations. Such algorithms are well-suited to
microprocessors with high-performance floating-point hardware, but are
extremely slow otherwise. Since many embedded systems use processors without
floating-point hardware, algorithms that do not require multiplication are
useful.
Break
14:28 --- Five Topics for Discussion -
Jim Harrison
-
Why floating point isn't "friendly" - it
isn't associative - and how to make it so. My opinion: it isn't worth the
trouble.
-
While I'm waiting for GreenArrays (GA),
hello XMOS. I will bring an XMOS board and
chips to show and tell. I already have the development board and hopefully the
chips will arrive by Friday.
-
Community building in Forth? This is an
invitation for people to collaborate on porting Colorforth to XMOS, including
documenting the whole process. This will serve as a general tutorial for
porting Forth. Why collaborate? I haven't started and I have never done
anything like this before. Why XMOS? It has a simple instruction set, is not
very expensive, and the chips are available.
-
Quaternions in Forth. I
will use quaternion multiplication to illustrate "good" (and bad?) Forth
programming. The discussion will start with browsing a thread that I started on
the Colorforth list and continue with comparing Colorforth's virtual machine
versus other Forth's VMs and how that impacts the coding style.
-
Opening session of the
Haypress Creek Fan Club.
I'm sure other SVFIG members have been reading Chuck's blog. I have questions,
perhaps others do as well, so perhaps we can discuss them together.
16:00 --- Adjourn - maybe earlier if
we run out of gas (or electricity)
How you can help SVFIG:
- Bring your speaker and topic suggestions
to every meeting!
- Your input for and participation in next
year's Forth Day is always welcomed.
Coming to SVFIG - September
26th
- Halted
/ HSC Parking Lot Sale
For a change of pace, SVFIG members are
encouraged to attend Halted's annual parking lot sale in Santa Clara. There are
always interesting things to see and purchase. The sale begins at 9am. We'll
convene for lunch at 11:45 up the street at
St. John's Bar and Grill and travel
to Stanford for an afternoon of Forth presentations and discussions beginning
at 1:30pm
-
Examples from the Forth Foundation
Library - John E. Harbold John will demonstrate some code which
makes use of the Forth equivalent of a C++ Class Library. The
Forth Foundation Library (FFL) is a
general purpose Forth library. Its main purpose is to make it easier to develop
applications. Examples presented will include using the Finite State Machine
(FSM) and Dynamic Strings.
Coming to SVFIG on Forth Day
2009
- Sam Falvo - "boring details of my
website's new blog implementation" - tentative
Coming to SVFIG:
-
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.
-
Prototyping with QFP Parts -
Kevin Appert This presentation will be based on an article in the
September 2008 issue of Circuit Cellar entitled "Prototyping with QFP
Parts".
-
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 Demo Looking for a
volunteer to present this.
-
PACE FIG-Forth Kevin Appert:
"I've sent an email to the implementer of the PACE FIG-Forth and he responded.
I think he got the idea that my invitation to present was 'one-time' rather
than 'any time'. Hopefully when there is something else PACE-related on the
program, he'll join us and present."
-
Meet the Mac - Kevin
Appert Kevin Appert: "I'm having trouble emailing Ward McFarland, the
Carbon MacForth guy. If anybody knows a good way to buy a copy, fill me in! The
email doesn't bounce but it doesn't get answered. The phone number is out of
service but the website is still up. I'm also getting error boxes when I try to
start PowerMops under OS-9.1, so if anybody wants to help out there I'd be
grateful."
Please register your interest for these
topics:
If you have anything you'd
like to talk about for the August meeting, please contact
Kevin Appert. |