09:30:14 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: Trying to make sure I've got the refs for the boards shown: https://nandland.com/ https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar-nano ? 09:31:58 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Brad and all - I can point you towards more current Lattice FPGA boards. The HX series is about a decade old. The UP5K series is more modern and also has been reverse engineered https://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/FPGAandCPLD/iCE40UltraPlus 09:33:24 From Ken Boak to Everyone: If you buy the HX4K it is really an HX8K that was knobbled by the Lattice proprietary software> With Open Source tools - it becomes an HX8K 09:33:33 From Dave Jaffe to Everyone: 393 Meetup members! 09:34:13 From M Edward Borasky (@znmeb) to Everyone: Good morning everyone! 09:34:41 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Good evening from London 09:36:31 From Program Chairman Kevin to Everyone: "professional" may be excessive. 09:40:46 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: I have heard that the HX4 is an 8k where not all of the functionality works - so it might be a risk to go there. 09:43:08 From M Edward Borasky (@znmeb) to Everyone: Yes ... very often "hobbled" large chips sold as smaller ones didn't pass QA at full size and instead of tossing them in the bin, they configure them at a smaller size that works and ship them. 09:44:20 From Program Chairman Kevin to Everyone: They used to do that with hard drives for PCs. They were very unreliable. 09:45:15 From Program Chairman Kevin to Everyone: very different from the old days when the "crippled" core memory was every bit as good as the usable memory. 09:46:00 From Ken Boak to Everyone: I sold 2500 boards with the HX4K. There was no feedback to suggest that it was anything other than a real HX8K 09:47:35 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: I am playing with boards that are affordable and available, I actually worked with Lattice in the past, so still have quite good relations there. Nandland GO Board has IO on board and the 8 bits on PMOD - loads of documentation and videos there The ICEsugar nano is small and about $25 to buy, very friendly support from China ICEStick is what I started with, but now about £140, but I have one from the past. ICEstick low-cost on ebay about £50. There are 2 options in the RobotShop, made by Devantech. 09:49:44 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: Ken, did you get confirmation from Lattice that your interpretation is correct 4k = 8k just different print? 09:51:06 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Lattice are not going to tell you that! It's cheaper to make 1 die and then hobble half of it in software. 10:02:08 From Ken Boak to Everyone: I have been working on a new product. It uses the WaveShare RP2350 Plus. This is a variant of the Pi Pico with a LiPo battery charger on board. It's about $8 with 16MB of flash and a choice of ARM or RISC-V cores 10:02:45 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: Russell at Nandland is very helpful, and I am stiil unsure, how many hours he has put in to generate all of the documentation and the videos. 10:03:00 From Ken Boak to Everyone: https://thepihut.com/products/waveshare-rp2350-plus 10:08:01 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: see as well two options in the robotshop: the ICEblips I have as well, 10:09:11 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: and the ICEfun board has lots of IO an HX8k chip https://uk.robotshop.com/search?q=fpga 10:14:21 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: The link to the ICsugar nano board I showed, using LP1k chip at about £20 https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar-nano Just copy the .bin file into the folder, and the board does the rest. 10:15:10 From Ken Boak to Everyone: This year is the 60th anniversary of the IBM 1130 - the machine on which Chuck Moore developed the first recognisable Forth. In 1965 it cost between $32K and $41K if you got a disk drive. The Pi Pico runs rings around this machine and you can buy for about $8 10:17:57 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: for the ICESstick low cost, search for iCE40HX1K-STICK M2 FPGA Development Board Lattice iCEstick Evaluation Kit 10:19:01 From M Edward Borasky (@znmeb) to Everyone: I programmed an IBM 1130 assembly for a living - in 1967 to be precise. 10:20:20 From Ken Boak to Everyone: In 2018 - Chuck talks about his experiences with the IBM 1130. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SASQMl0rvYg There is also a 2 hour interview with Chuck taken at this conference. But hey, that is what Google is for 10:23:13 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Brad and All, It would be neat to capture the (1985) Novix NC4016 - and port it to a modern FPGA board. 10:29:51 From Ken Boak to Everyone: In 1940, most mechanics knew how a Ford V8 worked and how to fix it. Why 85 years on is technology hidden behind IP barriers that have to be reverse engineered so people can understand it? Answer: Money. Never give away for free something that you can sell later. 10:38:52 From Liang PC to Everyone: Hilbert Hotel Secret Codes.pdf 10:39:01 From Program Chairman Kevin to Everyone: Doesn't one of the European Forth vendors have a clean-room reverse-engineered Harris RTX for sale? 10:41:13 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: The link is https://www.mpeforth.com/software/ 10:54:28 From Ken Boak to Everyone: So Brad, you ae working towards a Forth solution that does not require Verilog or VHDL to compile logic designs? 11:07:41 From M Edward Borasky (@znmeb) to Everyone: Speaking of vintage computing and Forth, I have the PiDP 11 PDP-11 emulator (https://github.com/obsolescence/pidp11) running on a 16 GB Raspberry Pi 5 and will be bringing up PDP-11 FigForth (http://www.stackosaurus.com/figforth.html) on it sometime in August. 11:14:01 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Brad-CAD : ) 11:14:10 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: {CB4513E7-B4E4-4AFF-87B1-3E044A6D6229}.png 11:15:06 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: Stephen, if you have any info on prior ForthHDL would be interested? 11:16:22 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: Testra did something there still on their website 11:16:38 From Program Chairman Kevin to Everyone: Brad, could you please make this part of the package you send to Dave for the web site? 11:17:44 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Brad - thanks for your presentation. Another example of Forth providing a sensible interface between user and hardware 11:17:58 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: Replying to "Brad, could you please make this part of the packa...": Brad, could you please make this part of the package you send to Dave for the web site? Will do 11:18:48 From Stephen A #1 to Everyone: @Juergen Pintaske -- Yes, it was Testra that made the Forth HDL, but they never published any details about the Language itself. I wonder if they would think about releasing more, since so much time has passed. 11:18:53 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: Replying to "Testra did something there still on their website": http://testra.com/Forth/index.htm 11:19:43 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: Brad, this was a great presentation. Thank you. 11:22:30 From Juergen Pintaske to Everyone: Replying to "@Juergen Pintaske -- Yes, it was Testra that made ...": John Hart at Testra is the best contact, they have the RACE32 running as he said in his last email in July 2025 The RA32 FPGA Processor is operational 11:23:49 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Brad - you gotta think like Chuck. What would he do if presented with a "mysterious" FPGA? He would keep prodding it and poking it until he understood it. Then he would write a few lines of Forth to automate what he had discovered. Great Work, really pleased that you have taken on this challenge. Please chat with James Bowman, he chose the Lattice HX1K to implement his J1A almost 10 years ago. I hope he is following your work 11:24:28 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: Replying to "@Juergen Pintaske -- Yes, it was Testra that made ...": ah found this: http://testra.com/Forth/RACE.htm 11:25:17 From Stephen A #1 to Everyone: Replying to "@Juergen Pintaske -- Yes, it was Testra that made ...": But there is no detail about the isa instruction set architecture. Testra says what they have done, and have obviously been successful. But they have not shared the details about it. What are the DSL's that he created? No details about the Languages he made have been divulged. 11:27:28 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: Replying to "@Juergen Pintaske -- Yes, it was Testra that made ...": Yeah is thin on detail 11:30:49 From Brad Nelson to Everyone: Replying to "@Juergen Pintaske -- Yes, it was Testra that made ...": A little more here: http://testra.com/Forth/VHDL.htm 11:31:52 From Ken Boak to Everyone: Brad - I like to work with logic schematics. I use H. Neemann's "Digital" simulator in his GitHub repo. (Below) If I could create a schematic in his simulator which could then be converted to a bit-file for a Lattice FPGA https://github.com/hneemann/Digital 11:41:40 From JohnG to Everyone: Liang, do you have a link to the information or code that you are working on? 11:43:40 From Program Chairman Kevin to Everyone: A two minute warning implies that I know when the speaker will end his talk. This is overly optimistic. I barely know when the actual end is, in many cases. 😎 11:46:07 From Stephen A #3 to Everyone: @Liang Ng Very interesting talk. I would like to see what you are doing developed further. How did you get such an interesting view of things. It looks important. Keep going! 11:57:23 From M Edward Borasky (@znmeb) to Everyone: That brings back fond memories, Bob!! I was one of those IBM people that heard the Falkkoff lectures! I worked at IBM Poughkeepsie from 1962 to 1965 as a programmer in a design automation group! 11:58:54 From M Edward Borasky (@znmeb) to Everyone: In the end we didn't use APL because of deadline pressures.