SVFIG
Next Meeting:
Saturday, June 23rd
at
Cogswell College
1175 Bordeaux Dr.
Rooms 197A and 197B
Sunnyvale, CA  94089


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 Cogswell, so bring your wifi.

Security


When attending SVFIG meetings, please be aware that Cogswell College now secures its doors on weekends. To gain entry to the building, there will be an SVFIG member stationed at the door from 10am to 10:15am to admit recognized SVFIG meeting attendees. If you are attending an SVFIG meeting for the first time, please bring along a printout of this agenda to identify your interest in Forth and gain admission. If you arrive after 10:15am, there will be a telephone number posted for you to call to alert someone of your presence at the door. The front door will also be checked at intervals of 20 to 30 minutes to accommodate those without cellphones.

Do not under any circumstances let any strangers enter Cogswell. Those who are authorized admittance have key-cards.

June Meeting Agenda


  • 09:00 --- Surplus Computers Parking Lot Sale
    This is at their new warehouse location, not at the site of their old retail store!
    27 Bonaventura Dr., San Jose, CA  95134
    (Off Interstate Highway 101, cross streets are Trimble & First Street.)
  • 10:00 --- Coffee and a Chat
    The talks will begin at 11am to accommodate those who want to go to the Surplus Computers parking lot sale. Coffee will be served at Cogswell for those who want to have a cup and a chat.
  • 11:00 --- F# Revisited --- CH Ting
    Ting will discuss the various functions of his current F# Forth implementation and the problems he's seen with it . He's pondering revisions and will explore the direction the project is headed. He is eager for discussion, critique, and input before he proceeds.
  • Noon --- Lunch
    Some folks bring their lunch, some folks go to Togos.
  • 13:30 --- Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, and Random Access
  • 14:00 --- Minimal Instruction Set Computers: A Tale of Quirky Little Machines --- Don Roberts
    "Over the years Moore and Ting have developed instruction sets that carefully balance a minimalist philosophy against the needs of program development and efficient execution. Practicality aside, what's the minimum number of instructions needed to support universal computation? Rather than theory, I'll discuss a couple of examples including an actual machine built in the late 1960s with only 8 opcodes."
  • 15:00 --- Break
  • 15:15 --- Shareware, Freeware, and Trialware --- All Assembled
    Bring in the name of your favorite bit of download. Anything from violin tuners to packet sniffers is fair game.
  • 15:45 --- Discussion of presentation ideas for the July SVFIG meeting
    This means you!
  • 16:00 --- Adjorn

How you can help:

  • Bring your speaker and topic suggestions to every meeting!
  • Your input for November's Forth Day is always welcomed.

Coming to SVFIG in July:

  • FEFFF -- A Refactored P16 - Don Roberts
    "I finally found enough excuses to start building my own Forth engine. Using Ting's P16 as the starting point, I refactored the RTL architecture and instruction set in consideration of FPGA characteristics. The ALU uses only a few percent of a $25 Spartan chip, and all memory is on-chip. Synthesized from behavioral VHDL, simulation indicates a clock speed of about 40 MHz."

Coming to SVFIG soon:

  • A presentation by Andy Korsak about WAV file and soundcard I/O software using Win32Forth for amateur radio applications is being planned. His preliminary work is posted on the Yahoo Win32Forth group. You must be a member of this group to access those files.

Please register your interest for these topics:

  • A presentation by a representative from Gumstix.

Off the table:

If you have anything you'd like to talk about in June,
please contact Kevin Appert.

Meeting Notes