SVFIG
Forth Day 2008
Saturday, November 15th
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 wi-fi enabled laptop.

Security Notice

When attending SVFIG meetings, please be aware that Cogswell College now locks its doors on weekends. To facilitate your entry to the building, there will be an SVFIG member stationed at the door from 9:45am to 10:15am to admit recognized SVFIG meeting attendees. If you are attending an SVFIG meeting for the first time, please bring a printout of this agenda to identify your interest in Forth and thereby 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 20 to 30 minute intervals to accommodate individuals without cellphones.

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

Meeting Agenda for Forth Day 2008


Morning Sessions

  • 09:00 --- Coffee and a Chat

  • 09:10 --- Welcome Message - SVFIG President George Perry

  • 09:15 --- Amateur Radio Direction Finding Using a PIC Forth Processor - Bill Ragsdale
    Bill, K6KN, will present his project, a radio direction finder for amateur radio "bunny hunts". To develop the one-chip PIC design, he has written a PIC Forth nucleus, interactive emulator, assembler, loader, and application code using Win32 Forth.

  • 09:45 --- Rainbow Forth becomes a WebApp - Brad Nelson
    Brad will demonstrate a reimplementation of ColorForth as a web application written in Javascript using Google AppEngine as a datastore.

  • 10:15 --- Firmware Engineering Workshop - CH Ting
    "eForth is a very simple Forth implementation portable to all types of microprocessors and microcontrollers. eForth's ideal platform requires 16 KBytes of RAM/ROM memory. If both ROM and RAM memory can be mapped to the same logical memory space, the firmware development will be greatly simplified. I will demonstrate two platforms, an ARM7-based prototype board from Olimex and an eP32 system implemented on a FPGA from Altera. Substantial Forth application code has been written and verified on these systems. This Workshop summarizes how to produce firmware with eForth."

  • 10:45 --- Break

  • 11:00 --- Forth 200x Standards Process - Leon Wagner
    "A new standards process (known as Forth 200x) for updating the 1994 ANS Forth standard is underway. I attended the most recent Forth 200x meeting in Vienna in September and will give a brief report on the current status of the updated standard."

  • 11:15 --- SwiftForth for Linux - Leon Wagner
    "FORTH, Inc. ported the core of SwiftForth-Win32 to Linux last winter and have been using it internally as well as on a few selected customer projects. The system has been in alpha test for about 10 months and is nearly ready to release."

  • 11:30 --- Forth as a Drop-in Scripting Component - Joseph M. O'Connor
    Joe will provide a brief history, its current architecture, how it's been used in the real world, and future possible directions. This work is based on the Creole language, which Joe presented at Forth Day 2003.

  • 12:00 --- BBQ Lunch - Catered by CH Ting

Afternoon Sessions

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

  • 13:05 --- ForthDrive Project Sees First Light - Sam Falvo
    "I've managed to get a ForthDrive to render to a VGA display. If time and space permits, I'll discuss the code and give a small demo."

  • 13:30 --- IntellaSys Update
    • SEAforth® Evaluation Kit 40C18 (SEK 40C18) - Dylan Smeder
    • Serial Terminal Driver Demo - Charley Shattuck
    • eForth and Interactive Debugger (IDB) Demo - John Rible
    • Communicating Processes and Talking Voltmeter Demo - Jeff Fox
    • New Music Demo - Michael Montvelishky

  • 15:40 --- Break

  • 16:00 --- Fireside Chat - c18 Instruction Set - Forty Years of Forth - Chuck Moore

  • 17:00 --- Adjourn

  • 17:30 --- Banquet - Exact time and venue to be determined during Forth Day

 

Proposed venues:

 
Hangen Szechuan Restaurant
134 Castro St.
Mountain View, CA
650/964-8881
Menu
Su Hong Eatery
4101 El Camino Way
Palo Alto, CA  94306
650/493-3836
Menu - pdf

If you have anything you'd like to talk about on Forth Day,
please contact Kevin Appert.

Meeting Notes