July 2007 Meeting Notes

Compiled by Dave Jaffe

Contributions from Kevin Appert and others

09:45

Coffee and a Chat

10:00

An E-mail Strategy for Home Users and Small Businesses - Masa Kasahara
"My e-mail saga: What options do we have?"

Sendio Spam Blocker

10:30

Linux, Xen, and Fedora 7 - John E. Harbold
"As you know, desktop computers are getting more and more powerful, such that they now can run several virtual operating systems at once. One of these programs is called Xen. You will be able to run more than one operating system at a time, suspend and resume, or migrate to another machine. Nice! I'll also talk about WIFI for Linux and the niceties of Fedora 7."

Xen virtual machine monitor

12:00

Lunch
Some folks bring their lunch, some folks go to Togos.

13:30

Introductions, announcements, rumors, and random access

14:00

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."

Don now has his Forth engine implemented and he's started testing it in an FPGA.

Slides - 46 Kb pdf file

Xess XSA-3S1000 Board - $199

15:30

Break

15:45

Discussion of presentation ideas for the August SVFIG meeting
Bring your speaker and topic suggestions. This means you!

16:00

Adjourn

Other items:

• TeleZapper - eliminated many unwanted telemarketer calls
• TPL Group - specializes in the development, commercialization and management of IP assets including those of IntellaSys
• dsFORTH - Forth language compiler for Win32 platform
• Forth discussion on Lambda the Ultimate Programming Languages weblog
• Thinking Forth - Leo Brodie's book on Amazon
• IntellaSys xSil26x controller chips - Product Detail in Embedded Computing Design

Videos

• Chuck Moore speaks to SVFIG videos
• Other SVFIG videos
• KCSM - The Computer Chronicles - Programming Languages - 02/09/1984 - video - guests are Gary Kildall, DRI; Paul Grady, Microfocus; Dave Eisenberg, Apple; and Elizabeth Rather, Forth Inc.