March 2003 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Re: [Oberon] Support for Realtek RTL-8139 with Native Oberon
by frey＠inf.ethz.ch 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

> I'm running Native Oberon on a Pentium-II class machine. > How can a network card such as, Realtek RTL-8139 be > configured in Native Oberon ? PCITools.Scan was able to > detect this card as a PCI device. The driver is currently only available for the new Bluebottle OS. http://bluebottle.ethz.ch It should not be too difficult to make a Native Oberon driver out of the Bluebottle OS driver. But... I have no time to do this myself. --Thomas Frey

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Re: [Oberon] Port of XML to Native/Plugin Oberon (was Re: Antwort: DAV porting question)
by Edgar＠EdgarSchwarz.de 08 Jul '03

08 Jul '03

John Drake <jmdrake_98(a)yahoo.com>: > Ok. Here's the code. > http://freezope2.nipltd.net/jmdrake/Oberon/xmlport.zip Thanks John, I will give it a try on the weekend. Regards, Edgar -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de "http://www.edgarschwarz.de" "http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/forum/oberon" Running Active Oberon Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

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Version control
by Felix Friedrich 01 Jun '03

01 Jun '03

Hello everybody, I have a problem that probably most of you would consider as "standard" but, still, I have no solution. I have been an Oberon programmer since some years now and have been working in cooperation with other people, we have written some packages together and up to now did the version control by hand, i.e. mainly by oral agreements. Now I am confronted with the situation that more and more people are working with some of the modules and sometimes extend them or correct errors or simply add new capabilities to them. More or less regularly I have to synchronize the versions which will become a problem soon since even more of us are becoming Oberon users. Does anyone of you have an automatic version control for Oberon (with logging in / out etc.)? Or maybe some of you can write some practical experience with Oberon-Version control? We are working with the PlugInOberon under Windows, the Linux-Version and (still experimental) with Bluebottle. Felix -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 (Build 294) Beta iQA/AwUBPb0WlkxdycIDx9VEEQLNcQCfV6Vvh6xm8wgomQ6Fy1fuGjXFq0IAn1qT 3wWElF69eNppXaSyxI2tKEhL =rmRz -----END PGP SIGNATURE------- Felix Friedrich Institut für Biomathematik und Biometrie GSF - Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit, GmbH Ingolstädter Landstraße 1, D-85764 Neuherberg Tel: ++49 89 3187 2436 email: friedrich(a)gsf.de --

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Oberon and Robots and Programming
by Patrick, Dr. med. Hunziker 11 Apr '03

11 Apr '03

As to Oberon System 3 as real-time OS: there is (was ?) the project XO/2 at ETH Zurich ( http://www.xo2.org/ ) which built a realtime Oberon OS for PowerPC based on System3 (with minor deviations) but allows code writing/compiling on a PC with crosscompilation. It was meant as an OS for mechatronics /robots and found a number of applications in the community, even in industry. I suppose Fernando Passold is referring to this. Strangely, this project did never make any waves (?) in the oberon newsgroups or mailing lists, although I suspect that a number of interesting points could arise from more insight into the project for the general "oberoner". However, apart from looking at some code, I never used it myself in real applications. Maybe Robert Brega at ETHZ or the people of the robotics group at lausanne technical university EPFL http://asl.epfl.ch/ who seem to use it too can help on implementation details or problems. some docu: http://xo2.org/Docs/aim01gc.pdf Greetings Patrick Hunziker Physics in Medicine Research Group University Hospital Basel

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Re: Robot & critical real-time systems with XO/2... not easy...
by Fernando Passold 28 Mar '03

28 Mar '03

Hello Mr Freed, Mr Danforth and Mr Drake, and the others who give me some inspiration, > NO has been used very successfully in real-time control/data-acquistion > apps. > Speak to Mike McGaw. He talks every now and then on comp.lang.oberon, > so you should be able to extract his email address from those archives. > I'm > sorry, but I don't have his address at home, which is where I'm working > today. Ok... I finally discover the problem and the solution. The mesage of run-time erros is related to low resources of XO/2 to allocate another task to its task's handler... Unfortunately the mesage generated is not clear... But before make a lot of combinations, adjusting the time parameters of mine real-time tasks and before to start the main tasks, mine software performs a test to verify if the task's handler of XO/2 was really allocated a memory to execute the pretended task... Of course, It take me a lot of time to discover this. Quite 1 week, but I reach the conclusion that I must enlarge the mainly deadline of mine real-time tasks from 1 [ms] to 2 [ms]. And that was enought to make my system works fine. With, of course, a quite exasting process of compile-run-and-testing the time parameters of mine critical real-time task (especially the parameter "duration"). Well... I'll hope I could finish my job in more 5 days that rest to me.... It's so hard to deal with critical real-time systems... It's 01:57 am and I am so tired that I go home now!!! My wife is supposed to be borring with me... thanks a lot about your interest, Fernando Passold

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Re. Mouse
by eas-lab＠absamail.co.za 27 Mar '03

27 Mar '03

Douglas G. Danforth wrote: > I agree with Fernando with regard to mouse interclicks. I used Oberon > V4 and S3 for many years and thought the interclicks were quite > efficient and nice but a little awkward to use. Having shifted to > Blackbox/Component Pascal I now see no advantage to interclicks. > Going back to them is quite frustrating and they feel restrictive. > > So, my recommendation is also to adapt the more common mouse > operations of Windows and Linux. No !! Ghost has gone. Don't revive the ghost. Do you want "more common" or more efficient ? What do you mean by "restrictive" ? By "efficient" I mean: * I can have 50% of my hands free, to hold a book, or papers ...etc. * touch typists keep a finger of each hand on the keyboard, so they don't have to take their eyes off their work to see where a specific key is. Using (dumbed down) mouse and keys would need to take their eyes of their work to find a key. * ... and much more ... My 2001 version uses F8 to toggle to 'dumbed down' mode (starts default). This has advantages for potential users who come from 'normal', to taste some of the advantages of n-o other than the UI, without having a nervous breakdown. -- Chris Glur. PS. n-o never pretended to be a real time OS. If Fernando wanted to get 'closer to RT' he should use native StandAlone, which I don't think gives any error mesgs. like he showed ? I think Fernando has no chance of succeeding: First he must learn to answer relevant questions which were asked. eg. is he using asmb, is he using SYSTEM.Mod ....

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Initializations of lookup-tables
by Christian Wassmer 27 Mar '03

27 Mar '03

Hello How do I build pre-calculated lookup-tables like this one: lookupTable: ARRAY 32 OF LONGINT; [...] PROCEDURE InitTable(); BEGIN lookupTable[0] := 4234; lookupTable[1] := 2342; lookupTable[2] := 23423; lookupTable[3] := 22634; lookupTable[4] := 3462; END InitTable; Instead of calculating each the time the value I need, I just jump into this lookup-table fetching the correct value. -Christian Wassmer

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Re: [Oberon] Please, what does it means? And how do deal with this?
by mcintosh＠vima.austin.tx.us 27 Mar '03

27 Mar '03

"Fernando Passold" <fpassold(a)das.ufsc.br> wrote on Tue, 25 Mar 2003 23:49:20 -0300 Please, I have again an error with Oberon System 3 R 2.3 Compilled. (I pray thay the new version is most better than this). Robot.Robot.StartController PC= : 44084 @for =3D 3 i =3D 4 robot =3D 100B6EC0H Main.StartRobot P= C: 8100 err =3D 269018688 Shells.ExecutionHandler.Run P= C: 3812 e =3D 1008E640H Tasks.Terminate PC= : 48240 Using the option "* \Nnf"of the compiller, I discover that it is pointing to the statement: robot.controlFBTask.Start; ........ My approach would be to see if you have a pointer to an object that is not initialized, and if you have compiled the program with all of the protection turned off, "for efficiency" Would you be comfortable putting the source to Robot on a web page where we could look at it?

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Re: [Oberon] Please, what does it means? And how do deal with this?
by mcintosh＠vima.austin.tx.us 27 Mar '03

27 Mar '03

The intel '386 and higher processors have flags in the task selector descriptor that control how the CPU works. Some of the flags denote that a segment is a data or code segment. If a segment is denoted as a data only segment, and a jmp, call, or rti instruction attempts to send the CS:IP (program counter) to that segment, you will get a processor exception that would be described by what you are seeing. In all of the Oberon systems that I have studied, the system does not allocate a segment that is data only. I am left with the thought that the version of Oberon that you are using has dramatically departed from all its kindred, or else you are trying to load a task selector that was not allocated under Oberon system control. Again, I wonder about how the task was initialized that you are trying to use. Does the system use the assembler? Do you import the module SYSTEM? Are you using a pointer that was never initialized and also using the compiler flags that turn off the run-time checks? Many of us have used Oberon with satisfaction for sophisticated real applications. > > I still does not understand what does mean this enigmatic run-time mesage: > > " Trap kind: Instruction-Fetch from No-Execute Segment" !? > > As the code has any problem to compile... > > This mesage does mean: this "toy real-time operation system" > does not have accomplished a task until the deadline time > especified!!! Does this mean that you have changed some data and now the program does not trap in the same place? Again, are you writing directly to memory using something such as SYSTEM.PUT, and bypassing the safety of the language? > > It was only a matter of adjust the parameters to execute the > real-time task related with the problem.... But really.. the mesage > generated by the system does not even ressambles to this.... > Do you have a "hard deadline" scheduler version of Oberon? Where did you get it? > > This mesage does mean: this "toy real-time operation system" > does not have accomplished a task until the deadline time > especified!!! Only this!!! >

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Native Alpha Feedback (Resizing gadgets)
by Treutwein Bernhard 27 Mar '03

27 Mar '03

In my new Native Alpha 5-Jan-2003 installation, Documents on the Desktop pop up almost fully maximized in vertical extent and they are not resizable with a MM drag in the control area of any corner. Is this a bug, a new feature, or what am I doing wrong ? -- Bernhard Treutwein, IuK, Ref. III A 3 Bernhard.Treutwein(at)verwaltung.uni-muenchen.de

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