SVFIG
Saturday, May 16th - Third Saturday
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.

If you would like to have meeting announcements e-mailed to you, send the message Subscribe SVFIG Meeting Agenda to: George Perry

Wireless Internet access is anticipated (though not guaranteed) at Stanford, so bring your wi-fi enabled laptop.

Meeting Agenda for May 2009

10:00 --- Coffee and a Chat

10:15 --- eForth in C - CH Ting
"I will continue my discussion of implementing eForth in C. The interpreter is already done, using a C execution pointer table. I am rearranging the byte code to build a byte code compiler. I think a byte code compiler will be able to compile the high level Forth words in the C system as well as compile new words interactively."

11:40 --- Lunch
Lunch on-campus. To avoid the "noon lemming effect", we'll leave a little early.

13:00 --- Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Random Access

13:30 --- FIG-Forth on a National Semiconductor PACE Microprocessor - Eric Smith
Eric is attempting to port PACE FIG-Forth to the National Semiconductor IMP-16. IMP-16 was National's earlier multi-chip 16-bit microprocessor, introduced in 1973. The PACE architecture was similar to the IMP-16, and the IMP-16 in turn was somewhat inspired by the Data General Nova.

"I've been an occasional user of Forth since 1978 or so. Before now I've never studied the internals of a Forth implementation, but now I'm groveling around in the bowels of FIG-Forth."

"Over the last four days, I've written an assembler and simulator for the old National Semiconductor PACE microprocessor (the first single-chip 16-bit microprocessor, introduced in 1975), and trying to get the published PACE FIG-Forth working. I've found that the published PACE FIG-Forth contains at least two nasty bugs that prevent it from working correctly at all. The U/ word as written does not work, which prevents numeric input and output from working. I fixed that, and now have found that defining new words with colon doesn't work. CREATE creates the word, and colon fills in the PFA, but the CFA of the new word isn't getting set properly. Possibly PSCODE is broken. This makes me wonder whether anyone other than the author ever used PACE FIG-Forth at all. Anyhow, I'm hoping to have this figured out and fixed before the meeting on Saturday."

"The point of the whole exercise is to eventually hack the PACE FIG-Forth into an IMP-16 FIG-Forth. IMP-16 was National's earlier multi-chip 16-bit microprocessor, introduced in 1973. The PACE architecture was similar to the IMP-16, and the IMP-16 in turn was somewhat inspired by the Data General Nova. Last year I was given a homebrew IMP-16 computer system, but not too much software for it, so it seems like getting Forth running on it should be an easy way to make it somewhat useful."

13:50 --- Killer Catalogs - Kevin Appert
"I will talk about the big books of industrial stuff that Grainger, McMaster Carr, and Rutland publish."

14:23 --- Break

14:47 --- Polaroid's Ultrasonic Sensors - Dave Jaffe
Dave will describe the operation of the Polaroid's ultrasonic sensors and how to interface to them in an embedded environment.

15:17 --- Upcoming Events of Interest - All Assembled
Maker Faire, Towel Day, trade shows.

15:24 --- Randomly Rambling Ramble Randomly - All Assembled
Who knows what we'll talk about?

Items from the SVFIG List:

MS-Debug removed from Windows

Mitch Bradley C-Forth for the ARM - where and how to download it

The FIG/SVFIG website:

Cobwebs

Forth Day videos - has anyone seen the beta?

Who's Who? Who's missing in action?

16:00 --- Adjourn

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:

Photos from Maker Faire 2009 - Dave Jaffe

Update on IntellaSys Chips - John Rible
The chips John Rible will be selling to SVFIG are in test now and perhaps he'll be at a future meeting to give us an update.

PowerMOPS Demo
Looking for a volunteer to present this.

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.

Please register your interest for these topics:

• Viewing of Analog by Design shows hosted by Bob Pease - list of shows
• Review and discussion of recent postings on news:comp.lang.forth
• Review and discussion of interesting Forth projects and many files at the Yahoo Win32Forth Group

If you have anything you'd like to talk about for the May meeting,
please contact Kevin Appert.