December 2006 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Problem with USB on ASUS P5WD2 (Intel 955X chipset)
by Yaroslav Romanchenko 10 Jan '07

10 Jan '07

When i've try to install Bluebottle (build 28.11.06) on USB devices (USB stick SanDisk Cruzer Crossfire 1.0 Gb and USB controller with attached IDE HDD) i've got error: AosUsb: Driver UsbStorage (USB Mass Storage Driver) has been added. AosUsbStorage: Storage device USB0 (SanDisk Cruzer Crossfire) is now accessible. AosUsbStorage: Device sent wrong tag in CSW AosUsbStorage: 2nd try to get CSW failed AosUsbStorage: Sense error on protocol sense AosUsbStorage: Device sent wrong tag in CSW AosUsbEhci: USBHC0 (USB Enhanced Host Controller): Failed to unlink TDs from pipe: Control In Pipe: Adr: 1 Ep: 0 [HighSpeed] Queue: 00000000H, QH: 038F8A80H, firstTD: 038F8AE0H, lastTD: 038F8B20H Timeout: 5000ms , MaxPacketSize: 64 Bytes, MaxRetries: 3, Mode: Normal, Last status: [InProgress], Last errors: [NoErrors] TD buffer: 63997 TD's EHCI data structure at 038F8A80: Isochronous Tranfers Desriptor Endpoint Capabilities 1: DeviceAddr: 1, Endpoint: 0, Speed: HighSpeed, MaxPacketSize: 64, NakRL: 3, Flags: [DataToggleControl][Head] Endpoint Capabilities 2: Mult: 1, HubAddr: 0, HubPort: 0, SplitCMask: 0, QhSMask: 0 Queue Head Horizontal Link Pointer: 03A17D40 (Queue Head) Current qTD Pointer: 038F8B20, Next qTD Pointer: 00000001 Transfer overlay: qTD at 038F8A90: qTD Token: Pid: IN, DataToggle: DATA1, Bytes to transfer: 0, IOC: No, CERR: 3 qTD Token Status: [Active] Buffer information: Current Buffer: 0, Nak counter: 1 Buffer Pointer 0: 00000000 Current Offset: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 1: 00000000 C-prog-mask: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 2: 00000000 S-Bytes / Frametag: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 3: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 4: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer0: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer1: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer2: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer3: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer4: 00000000 Alternate Next qTD Pointer: Invalid (00000005) Next qTD Pointer: Invalid (00000001) qTD chain: qTD at 038F8AE0: qTD Token: Pid: SETUP, DataToggle: DATA1, Bytes to transfer: 0, IOC: No, CERR: 3 qTD Token Status: Buffer information: Current Buffer: 0 Buffer Pointer 0: 03D68000 Current Offset: 00000930 Buffer Pointer 1: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 2: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 3: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 4: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer0: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer1: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer2: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer3: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer4: 00000000 Alternate Next qTD Pointer: Invalid (00000001) Next qTD Pointer: 038F8B20 qTD at 038F8B20: qTD Token: Pid: IN, DataToggle: DATA1, Bytes to transfer: 0, IOC: No, CERR: 3 qTD Token Status: Buffer information: Current Buffer: 0 Buffer Pointer 0: 00000000 Current Offset: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 1: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 2: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 3: 00000000 Buffer Pointer 4: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer0: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer1: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer2: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer3: 00000000 ExtBufferPointer4: 00000000 Alternate Next qTD Pointer: Invalid (00000001) Next qTD Pointer: Invalid (00000001) End of Chain AosUsbStorage: Mass storage reset failed. AosUsbStorage: Device sent wrong tag in CSW AosUsbEhci: USBHC0 (USB Enhanced Host Controller): LinkTDs: ERROR: PIPE IS STILL ACTIVE!!!! AosUsbStorage: Mass storage reset failed. --- Cheers, SAGE http://sage.h15.ru/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NBI WebMail service

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USB CD Boot
by Aubrey.McIntosh＠Alumni.UTexas.Net 07 Jan '07

07 Jan '07

I have a system with a USB based CD drive. I built a CD iso image with a kernel that is known to boot a USB memory stick. There are two additional AosStorage??? modules that are also linked into the file, that end up being loaded when I mount a USBCD based file system. It doesn't boot. I have set Init=0 and TraceMode=3 and watched as all sorts of insightful information scrolls off the top of the screen too fast for me to read. It will be a lot of effort to set up serial debugging support. I wonder if there is some way to make the trace output slow down. (scroll lock does not work) Alternately, has anyone already succeeded at a USB CD boot? -- -- Aubrey McIntosh, Ph.D.

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bluebottle on intel macs?
by gsl＠statlab.uni-heidelberg.de 30 Dec '06

30 Dec '06

Are there and instructions/tips how to install bluebottle on intel macs, in particular using Parallels Desktop? Any recommendation is welcome. gs.

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BBT format, national alphabet and Styles
by Yaroslav Romanchenko 26 Dec '06

26 Dec '06

1. When I in PET or Notepad try to save in a BBT format the text in which the characters of national alphabet (for example Cyrillic) are contained TRAP happens. 2. Why are national characters in default font always displayed by the glyphs of greater size than the Latin characters? Where this glyphs and sizes can be redefined? 3. How possible to do so that the changed parameters (for example, size) of styles (Normal, Bold, Highlight, ...) went into effect at a next boot BB? --- Cheers, SAGE http://sage.h15.ru/

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Support for "Bold Italic" in AosOTFonts
by Yaroslav Romanchenko 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

Before I wrote in a theme "[Oberon] Bug in AosOTFonts module": "I already 2 weeks unsuccessfully try to be registered in the Oberon mailing list, so I had to send a letter directly. I found an bug in the AosOTFonts module, resulting in TRAP at an attempt to pass a parameter "style" to the procedure Make. It is needed to change definition of variable style from "style: ARRAY 1 OF CHAR" to "style: ARRAY 2 OF CHAR", that a variable could adopt the character of style and character 0X." The further study of procedure Make of the module AosOTFonts showed that in the case of pointing of size of font of "8" the incorrect names of fonts turn out as a result, because verification on "temp" is alphabetic character in the area of code is not done: IF (Utilities.Length(temp) = 1) THEN style[0] := temp[0]; sr.SkipWhitespace(); sr.Token(temp); ELSE style[0] := 0X; END; Further caused the surprise, why it is possible to use only one character for pointing of style of "b" or "i", if as I correctly understood in BB it is possible to use the "Bold Italic" style and it requires suffix of "bi" in the file name of raster font. Taking into account all I noted above I see a necessity to make alterations in the AosOTFonts module. Piece of code "style: ARRAY 1 OF CHAR;" to replace on "style: ARRAY 3 OF CHAR;", and piece " IF (Utilities.Length(temp) = 1) THEN style[0] := temp[0]; sr.SkipWhitespace(); sr.Token(temp); ELSE style[0] := 0X; END;" to replace on " IF ((Utilities.Length(temp) = 1) OR (Utilities.Length(temp) = 2))& ~IsNumber(temp) THEN COPY(temp, style); sr.SkipWhitespace(); sr.Token(temp); ELSE style[0] := 0X; END;" And what means suffix of "m" in the file name of raster font? Monospace? --- Cheers, SAGE http://sage.h15.ru/

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Re: OLPC - One Laptop Per Child
by easlab＠absamail.co.za 15 Dec '06

15 Dec '06

> > OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines sounds good and I think some of > > its ideas will go into other products. But the original idea of villagers > > who are 100 km from mains electricity having computer access seems > > likely to fail. > > Aubrey McIntosh wrote: > Do those same villagers have cell phones? Yes and 'village _PCs' shouldn't use more than about 6 times as much power as cell phones, that's why I think ARM is the way to go. The hand-cranking scheme seems absurd because there is no new technology that can make a mechanical watch competitive with a semiconductor one. Ie. making a cost-effective reliable suitable power generator would be more of an engineering miracle than making the rest of the OLPC project. OTOH I don't have figures for the OLPC's Goede CPU power consumption. A big colour display is also a power user ? And wifi ? As previously stated the simputer had the right idea re. hardware. Unfortunately they failed in the important 'fuzzy' but vital area: IMO aviation, radio, micro-processors [hence the computer industry] was pioneered/driven by mostly enthusiasts/hobbyists - mostly US. The collaborative [without immediate remuneration] model, which is essential for certain projects, is culturally a no-no for non-westerners. Related to the difficult-to-quantify/describe aspects, the MIT OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines seems to be worth a Ph.D., and reminds me of Xerox Parc. The way wifi is integrated into all aspects of operation will further boost the kids who are using it [not African villagers] and increase the digital divide. IMO if they get the Human_Interface right, the hardware will follow. The real problems are socio-political [human related], not technical. BTW in the 80's I took a HX20 [8 bit 6301 based for which I had made a P-code Pascal-subset system] and later a X86-DOS portable to Malawi and employed 6 locals as 'short hour clerical assistants' to work on computing projects. I had the last electrified cottage on the east side of the lake. One of the biggest problems was getting scribbling paper, for the 9 months I spent there. Chris Burrows wrote: > Oberon will have its time and place but perhaps not exactly in its present > form. Maybe a universal limited-resource device is the sort of launching pad > that will make a significant difference. Technology is moving so fast that limited-resource is becoming insignificant ? What remains are the human determined factors: we've still got 10 fingers, English [26 leters ++] is the dominant text, it's much easier to recognise than remember...etc. Fortunately much of Wirth's ideas are based on these universal human attributes rather than on transient technology. With my African ISP chaos, I don't know if I've already posted the text below ? =============== To: oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch,crglur@gmail.com Subject: Re: OLPC - One Laptop Per Child Aubrey.McIntosh wrote: > There was the NIC computer that used Linux and booted from a CD, and > there was no "disk". It did have ethernet. I booted BlueBottle onto > that machine. They appear to be defunct. > > I also have a LEX CV860A machine on my desk and it runs BlueBottle. I > love this machine. This machine is available for about $250, and has > no mechanical parts (heat sink, no cpu fan, cflash, USB memory stick) > > I thought there would be some advantage to the Oberon community to > focus on this class of machines, and I even corresponded some directly > with some of the BlueBottle group. > > I guess I feel jaded after maybe 15 years of wondering how to make > Oberon more accepted. What was your sense of something new or > compelling about the OLPC machine? > As MIT-OLPC said they are not in the computer making business, but in education. It's about the 'digital divide': until recently smallpox was a problem - AFAIK mainly USA fixed it; they could have fixed polio too, except for the Nigerian Islamists saying the innoculation plan was a racist scheme to sterilize their females. Then there's bird flu which travels globally and is going to kill you. Since the 1st world can't remain immune from eg. Africa and it's been proven that the Marshal Plan doesn't doesn't work with them [Haiti has been 'independant' for over 200 years], so G7 want to try magic technology to uplift/educate the 3rd world. Importantly, health/medicine is now seen increasingly to depend on knowledge and self managment, rather than drugs as it was before the '60s exposure of the dangers of smoking. The extreme example being HIV/AIDS. Undoubtedly computers & the net facilitates the cheap spread of knowledge. Hence the OLPC. It was planned/advertised to be supplied for US$100 - ordered 1 million minimum quantity. Now it's said that Lybia bought a packet for US$135 each. Some reports tell of costs escalating to US$150. Of course with India & China's population, a million is not much. But then you must have non-mains-electric operating. OLPC don't seem to give current consumption figures for their 'goede CPU'. But AFAIK the low power capable CPU is the ARM. Which is what the simputer chose. And which is apparently also mature for linux. Obviously the whole project centers on linux. The simputer designers had a nice idea: each user would have his own 'flash card' [the flash-mem technology had not yet exploded at that time]. By that method each scholar/user could have his own data for minimum cost, and they could time share. Like buying a bus ticket when you need it instead of owning a car. Chris Burrows wrote: > Oberon will have its time and place but perhaps not exactly in its present > form. Maybe a universal limited-resource device is the sort of launching pad > that will make a significant difference. I could never see why Oberon should be more 'limited-resource' than eg. C. Probably the non-preemptive OS ? Isn't BB/Aos preemptive ? OLPC apparently describes a round-robin scheme too ? I used to think N-O's round-robin scheme was fine, but for inet, I see it's painfull: when I call news and it takes 60 secs. to reply, I've got to pay telco costs while a have useless waits. By contrast with linux, I can just send off for 10 http pages via a lynx script, while I'm fumbling manually with mail/news. == Chris Glur

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Re. OLPC - One Laptop Per Child
by easlab＠absamail.co.za 14 Dec '06

14 Dec '06

Douglas G. Danforth wrote: > http://slashdot.org/ had a recent article about the MIT project > "One Laptop Per Child" > (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines) The biggest single wiki 'page' I've seen so far, with quite some in depth work on the subject. And they've also recognised the power of the wiki format. > In that documentation the following caught my attention since this > aspect is similar to Dr. Wirth's design for Oberon. Is anyone at > ETHZ interacting with the MIT group on OLPC? > > > "Simplicity > We designed the entire laptop interface with a goal of simplicity. ---snip -- I've been watching OLPC closely, because I've been on the mailing list of the simputer for years. Simputer apparently failed. IMO because it didn't build a user base. The idea of collaborating freely, was apparently too strange for the Indian based community. OTOH I think its basic idea was more valid that MIT's OLPC, which I fear doesn't solve the power-supply problem. OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines sounds good and I think some of its ideas will go into other products. But the original idea of villagers who are 100 km from mains electricity having computer access seems likely to fail. == Chris Glur.

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Re. TCP/IP networking
by easlab＠absamail.co.za 13 Dec '06

13 Dec '06

Eric wrote: > I wish to write a simple networking application. Is there an Oberon > compiler (for Windows or Linux) that comes with a module library > for TCP networking? This is not a direct answer, but a just a qwik cutNpaste-demo of how I would try to find out. Applying System.Directory ^ to *TCP* shows:-- .. NetTCP.Obj BAK:AosTCP.Obj Applying Watson.ShowDef ^ to NetTCP.Obj shows:-- NetTCP.Def == IMPORT SYSTEM, NetPorts, NetIP; PROCEDURE Send (C: .. PROCEDURE Receive (C: ... PROCEDURE Connect (VAR C: ... .. PROCEDURE Start; PROCEDURE Stop; PROCEDURE ShowState; ----------- Applying Watson.ShowDef ^ to AosTCP.Obj shows:-- AosTCP.Def == IMPORT AosIP, NetSystem, Kernel, Modules, Files, OFS, NetBase, NetPorts, NetIP, NetUDP, NetTCP, NetDNS, Input, V24, Texts, Objects, Display, Fonts, Reals, Oberon, Viewers, TextFrames, MenuViewers, Strings, Dates, AosOut, Out; TYPE Connection = POINTER TO RECORD PROCEDURE Available (): LONGINT; PROCEDURE Close; PROCEDURE Open (lport, fip, fport: LONGINT; VAR res: LONGINT); PROCEDURE Receive (VAR data: ARRAY OF CHAR; ofs, size, min: LONGINT; VAR len, res: LONGINT); PROCEDURE Send (VAR data: ARRAY OF CHAR; ofs, len: LONGINT; propagate: BOOLEAN; VAR res: LONGINT); END; ?! this one looks like an OOD approach ? ----------- So to me it seems that TCP modules/libraries for N-O & Aos, exist. And included in N-O [& Aos presumably] there are Windows & Linux & standAlone compilers for the code. AFAIK, nicely documented libraries don't exist. This, apparently because ETH systems are evolved from student projects; ie. the short term view of 'my project' is followed, rather than 'how to make it extendable by others'. == Chris Glur.

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TCP/IP networking
by Eric 10 Dec '06

10 Dec '06

Hi all. I wish to write a simple networking application. Is there an Oberon compiler (for Windows or Linux) that comes with a module library for TCP networking? E.

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New BB maintenance release
by Ulrike Glavitsch 08 Dec '06

08 Dec '06

Dear BB users, a new crazy-fresh BB maintenance release is available under www.bluebottle.ethz.ch. It contains changes to the front-end modules of the compiler that make it usable for both a 32 bit and a 64 bit target machine. In particular, the new data types SYSTEM.ADDRESS and SYSTEM.SIZE have been introduced. They map to a 32 bit integer value, i.e. LONGINT, in case of a 32-bit target machine and to a 64 bit integer, i.e. HUGEINT, in case of a 64 bit machine. The port to Bluebottle to 64 bit is an ongoing project here at ETH. The people doing the port for the 64 bit architecture are using already the new data types in the kernel modules of the port. For the 32-bit BB release(s), we will probably also replace all LONGINT declarations that either denote addresses or sizes by the new data types. Best regards, Ulla Glavitsch -- ETH Zürich Ulrike Glavitsch Eggler Institut für Computersysteme Clausiusstrasse 59 CH-8092 Zürich Tel.: +41 44 632 70 49 Fax : +41 44 632 13 07

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