August 2005 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Oberon Database
by Dan Parnete 19 Sep '05

19 Sep '05

Hello, I have read this list archives, the documentation inside the distributions, some extra found on the web and I understood. Database is a Tabu word in this community, and is better to not talk about. There is no trace in any distribution (excluding the commercial BlackBox) and the new Bluebottle project doesn't intend to implement one. Ok. It's a choice of live. But don't tell me none of you never needed to put some data altogether. I can't believe nobody extended at list the Library code to more flexible collections management. I saw some database projects started long time ago. Where are this implementations? In other words: if I need a database, have I write it myself? Dan

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Re: [Oberon] WinAos progress report
by shark＠gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Edgar, > I plan to document [2 problems in NetSystem] in my Wiki. Good idea. Thanks. > After installing Dexpot which gives me multiple desktops on XP I now have > a nice > setting with an XP and an Oberon desktop. You have resigned to using Windows XP? A few years ago you seemed staunchly anti-MS or at least anti-DOS. Did you find a satisfactory video mode for the new laptop? Regards, ... Peter Desktops.OpenDoc http://carnot.pathology.ubc.ca/

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WinAos progress report
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 31 Aug '05

31 Aug '05

Hi, after finding 2 problems in NetSystem concerning mail I can use WinAos for mailing now. I plan to document this in my Wiki. Thanks to Felix for his support. After installing Dexpot which gives me multiple desktops on XP I now have a nice setting with an XP and an Oberon desktop. Cheers, Edgar

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native oberon for powerpc
by Smoke Bellew 23 Aug '05

23 Aug '05

Hello. Excuse me I did not understand cleanly, is MacOberon running on a powerpc natively or it should be run on top of macos ? The reason I asking you is I want to buy Apple 100mhz 16mg RAM laptop if it can run oberon natively. If not, I wouldn't buy it ;) Thank you regards Norayr --- http://geocities.com/asprayama/if-so

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[Ann] Oberon Central
by Gerardo Ospina 22 Aug '05

22 Aug '05

A new Oberon site has been set up at http://www.oberon.ws. Mirrors of The Oberon Reference Site, Juice and Oberon at UCI were partially recontructed from archived versions at The Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org) and personal backup files. It is intended to fully reconstruct these sites. The site is organized as a directory with many categories. Gerardo Ospina. ps: Does somebody know how to contact Guy Laden?

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Re: [Oberon] Notebook and Bluebottle (2)
by shark 22 Aug '05

22 Aug '05

Edgar, > I have a new Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo L7300 notebook. ... Must be nice. =8~) > Any more ideas what to do with this hardware ? You can put Aos BootMan on the most convenient bootable medium (a usb storage?). A brief instruction is at the end of AosInst.Tool. The two *.Bin files are in AosSys.zip. Kernel and applications are not needed to check video. Test this medium on a convenient machine. If you set ScrollLock during startup, BootMan will pause, identify partitions and tell you a few prompts. One of the prompts will invoke a list of video modes. Useable and non-useable modes are distinguished. >From there, installation will probably be easy. Seems BootMan was written by André. Thanks André! Regards, ... Peter

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Notebook and Bluebottle (2)
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 22 Aug '05

22 Aug '05

Hi, some Details added. I have a new Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo L7300 notebook. When I boot Bluebottle from CD (CD works on other machine) I get a "Oberon loading" and the screen goes blank :-( When interrupting boot I see that screen is 1024x768 which is okay for my screen. XP System ist telling me: - Processor: Intel Celeron M360, 1,4 GHz - Graphics: VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IPG, Manual says: VIA PN800 - VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter - Ralink RT2500 Wireless LAN Card - NO PS2 port -> USB Mouse (Even wireless atm) - NO Floppy -> DVD Dual Layer instead. - NO serial port -> no serial debugging. Proposals - Stop boot with shift, change to external monitor, continue boot => also goes blank - Set MaxProcs=1 => doesn't help Any more ideas what to do with this hardware ? -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de, Running Bluebottle www.edgarschwarz.de Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler ! Albert Einstein www.edgar-schwarz.de/cgi-bin/moin/ www.edgar-schwarz.de/cgi-bin/moin/SwOberon

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Re: [Oberon] Notebook and Bluebottle (2)
by Chris Hafey 20 Aug '05

20 Aug '05

On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 18:23:06 +0200, edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de wrote: > Message-ID: <200508191623.j7JGN6ew014734(a)post.webmailer.de> > XP System is telling me: > - VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter > - Ralink RT2500 Wireless LAN Card > - NO Floppy -> DVD Dual Layer instead. > Any more ideas what to do with this hardware ? Only to install the Alpha Native Oberon and install Bluebottle that way, rather than from a Bluebottle CDROM. May want to add a FAT-16 partition if you do it this way. I've got a few laptops going in Linux by swapping out the hard disk and placing it into another system with appropriate boot media (diskette drive usually). Then transplant back to the target and (hopefully) make any repairs required, once booted. By 'Alpha' I simply mean the ETH 'Alpha' distrib. of Oberon. Older version of N.O. (notably 'Stable') was inappropriate for later Bluebottle installation (only Alpha was able to format the target hard disk partition to Bluebottle standards). I've only installed Native Oberon via diskette (Oberon0.Dsk) so I do not know if this is a practical approach for your needs. >From within Alpha Native Oberon it seems to me the textual config for AOS should be accessible. When I installed Bluebottle, I did so (on this IBM 770 laptop, mfgr. circa 1999) using only Alpha N.O.; bootstrapping into Bluebottle was as simple as adding an extra line to Linux's lilo.conf (the line was identical to that used to boot Native Oberon, with of course a different partition made reference to -- and Linux was previously installed on only part of the hard disk, which was convenient when it came time to get N.O. and Bluebottle going on this system). Seems to me Oberon0.Dsk (as supplied for Alpha) is in essence a suitable Bluebottle boot disk (indirectly) in that all the above bootstrapping was done based on using it (except for the LILO part which can be accomplished with a Linux boot diskette, CDROM etc. without ever installing Linux, proper). Your comment seems to indicate you do not have a floppy drive to boot from, though. I wonder if your DVD drive is at the root of some of your problems here. I had difficulties with Native Oberon and LILO; Fortunately, Alpha was good and allowed boot from hard disk under LILO boot management. It appeared that GRUB would have fared no better (and is at any rate what I started with before migrating to LILO). Seems also that the VESA mode(s) should suffice to gain Bluebottle. I have read that it is possible to install Linux via RS-232-C when the video hardware simply will not cooperate during boot- strapping phase of installation. The RS-232-C port plays the role of a terminal here (not as a link to mass media storage). Eventually, of course, the video hardware has to function, but boot media is notoriously terse (in functionality) on nearly any system I've worked with. Hope this is of some use to you. Regards, Christopher, WA1TNR in Torrington CT USA 73W 41N

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Re: Notebook and Bluebottle - higher view
by easlab＠absamail.co.za 20 Aug '05

20 Aug '05

--- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de wrote: > Hi, > some Details added. > I have a new Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo L7300 notebook. > When I boot Bluebottle from CD (CD works on other > machine) I get a > "Oberon loading" and the screen goes blank :-( That's why it's called the bleeding-edge. Thanks for 'walking in front and taking the bullets'. John M. Drake wrote:- > Side note, it would be nice if there was someway to > directly use Linux drivers from BlueBottle or to > convert them somehow. Pipedream I know. I'm back on my [stale-old] topic: advocating 'moving up the leaverage chain'. I.e. binary-coding > hex > asm > compiled > 4GL > 'management'. The conceptual gap from standard [what we've invested learning in] asm, C, or even good-old-Turbo-Pascal syntax for hardware drivers, and n-o [presumably Aos/Blue-bottle too] is prohibitive. It would be profitable to 'move up the productivety chain' and not just think of writing drivers for the 'oberon-family', but rather to make a[n] utility to help translate between the many languages - not only from "n-o funny assembler" to more standard syntax. There are 2 management techniques to assist in moving towards this goal: 1. Edgar previously was advocating the virtues of the 'Wikki system', which I've only recently come to appreciate. It apparently HAS acheived a mechanism whereby contributors can add-value to the overall project[s] at their convenience. The ability to randomly, incrementally add-value to a project [without centralised control] means that all the projects which previously needed a single-unified 'life', now become doable. Analagously the aircraft doesn't need to complete the flight in real time, but can suspend and fork and restore randomly - if you get me. 2. Think small & refine/grow. n-o provides '4GL' tools. Eg. simple routines callable from scripts and the very 'on the surface' mouse-chording interface. As an example, I want to access my mail box without going the normal route: ppp > PAP > ID & Password [perhaps also as a standby for a portable DOS only capable thing, when my telco-line is dud]. Which n-o's "HLL facilities" allows - more conveniently than linux. I'm moving forward thus: --- File: NonPPP.Tool == ! Howto connect ISP non-ppp ? = Try "ppp", "?", "menu", and "terminal" ! Desktops.OpenDoc BAK:V24.Panel ! edit to: 2 38400 8 1 none ! first use: CRGV24Debug.CloseCOM2 ! Paste to V24.Panel :- ATZ ATX ATM2D 3407501 Name= 2nm4nx6x@za Paswrd= .... < rest of notes etc. from NewsGroup ...etc.> ========== end of NonPPP.Tool extract === For those who don't know what this is about: *.Tool is a n-o 'heuristic management tool concept', which helps us handle the info-overload. The few lines above [preferably colour-coded for extra assistance] allow me to use n-o's facilities to incrementally get to my ISP mail-box without ppp facilities. Next time[s] I'll extend the capabilities. And when I'm done, I'll capute the knowledge in a naive script. The important point, is that one doesn't need to comitt to a big project, where all is lost if/when the final destination isn't reached 'in one trip'. ========== Relating this back to "writing drivers for blue-bottle/Aos, I advocate: * investigating a 'translation tool[s]' which will help not only writing hardware drivers in more 'standard syntax', but which [perhaps with extention/modification] can HELP eg. translate to n-o from C, Pascal, Modular-2, Polog, Java ...etc. Linux's vim editor which does syntax hi-lighing for multiple languages is great. Think of heuristic-tools, rather than automagic wizards. * start off with a primitive version and allow it to evolve/refine. == Chris Glur. PS. a previous related thread: "SyntaxConstrainedEditor: howto" gave me the following:- * using the existing high-level-language facilities of n-o: ET.Popup with 'minimal scripts'; a primitive SyntaxConstrainedEditor was trivially acheivable. Here are some typical scripts :-- File: VAR == ET.Marker set 433 444 ET.Open qVAR == ET.Marker set 433 422 System.Clear * ET.Recall File: qVAR == VAR ^ID : ^TypeList ; File: IF.ELSE == ET.Marker set 433 444 ET.Open qIF.ELSE ET.Marker set 433 422 System.Clear * ET.Recall File: qIF.ELSE == <-- delete IF ^Exprn THEN ^Statment ELSE ^Statment END ============ qAsignmemt ^InScopeVar := ^Exprn ============ qIF <-- delete IF ^Exprn THEN ^Statment END ============ qWHILE Quite honestly, I can't see [now] how it works. But the point is that an initial evaluation can be made at a very-high-level [superficial programming], before refinement. In fact I consider S3's whole interface with the mouse-chording a type of VeryHLL. PSS. the contributor who pointed out that existing editor 'Pet' could probably do [towards] SyntaxConstrainedEditor is likely correct. As posted, I concluded that the value of such an editor would be trivial, given the other hassle in n-o programming. OTOH if the framework is adaptable to other tasks, it becomes a more cost effective exercise. Look for leaverage. More passengers to share the journey cost ?

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Notebook and Bluebottle
by edgar＠edgarschwarz.de 19 Aug '05

19 Aug '05

Hi, I have a new Fujitsu/Siemens Amilo notebook. When I boot Bluebottle from CD (CD works on other machine) I get a "Oberon booting" and the screen goes blank :-( When interrupting boot I see that screen is 1024x768 which is okay for my screen. XP System ist telling me: - Graphics: VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IPG - VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter - Ralink RT2500 Wireless LAN Card - NO PS2 port -> USB Mouse (Even wireless atm) - NO Floppy -> DVD Dual Layer instead. Any ideas what to do with this hardware ? -- edgar(a)edgarschwarz.de, Running Bluebottle www.edgarschwarz.de Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler ! Albert Einstein www.edgar-schwarz.de/cgi-bin/moin/ www.edgar-schwarz.de/cgi-bin/moin/SwOberon

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