July 2021 - Oberon - mailman3.inf.ethz.ch

Re: [Oberon] Emulators
by Jörg 14 Feb '22

14 Feb '22

Wojtek > How can I proceed, in practical terms, to use your JS emulator for development? Perhaps we should start discussing, WHAT you want to change. At the moment I see three different levels of HW modifications: easy, more difficult, impossible. Basically, see an emulator as virtualization. In virtualization you have a host machine (where the emulator runs on) and a guest machine (this is the FPGA board). I ignore „containers“ at the moment Easy: if you want to extend the RISC-5 instruction set in Verilog (eg add an autoincrement instruction) the modification of the emulator is rather straight forward. I neglect the fact that you have to modify the Oberon-07 compiler to use this new instruction, because this is not important for the emulator. More difficult: if you want to add IO mapped HW (eg Ethernet or Wifi) or memory mapped HW (eg color display) to your FPGA and the host machine has an equivalent of this HW, with a little bit of effort the emulator can be modified to map the IO register commands or new memory layout to the corresponding host HW. Impossible: if you want to add HW to your FPGA and the host machine does not have an equivalent HW (eg a neutrino sensor) then it‘s impossible for the emulator to mimic the new FPGA HW. br Jörg

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Wanted: Oberon Syntax in TextMate, Sublime Text or Atom Grammar
by Treutwein Bernhard 01 Jan '22

01 Jan '22

Does somebody have grammars for Oberon / Oberon-2 / Component Pascal / Active Oberon as grammar for TextMate / Sublime Text / Atom Background: Github wrongly classifies Oberon / Oberon-2 / Component Pascal / Active Oberon as Modula-2. I opened quite some tiome ago an issue in the github/linguist project (https://github.com/github/linguist/issues/3888) and they don't accept EBNF grammars. -- Bernhard Treutwein

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Re: [Oberon] _Compiler_Construction_ by Niklaus Wirth
by peter＠easthope.ca 17 Nov '21

17 Nov '21

P.s. for interest. From: peter(a)easthope.ca Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2021 08:37:22 -0800 > Currently the cheapest copy of _Compiler_Construction_ is 43.09 US$, > delivery in the USA included. Appears the copy posted at 43.09 US$ was sold that day. Subsequently the vendor listed another copy at 105.61 $US. The book market can be as volatile as the stock market. Regards, ... P. L. -- Tel: +1 604 670 0140 Bcc: peter at easthope. ca

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Re: [Oberon] Erratic Mouse Behaviour in A2
by peter＠easthope.ca 23 Aug '21

23 Aug '21

From: Treutwein Bernhard <Bernhard.Treutwein(a)Verwaltung.Uni-Muenchen.DE> Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2021 12:54:59 +0000 > In my Linux32/a2 "installation" my mouse behaves erratically, cursor > jumps. Connecting the same mouse to Windows 10 and using Win64/a2 > work without problems. Bernhard, (1) Does the pointer move when the mouse is not touched? I'd expect that to be a software bug or hardware defect. A few problems appeared to creep in with the renaming of numeric types. http://cas.inf.ethz.ch/news/1 (2) Alternatively, is there a delay between moving the mouse and moving the pointer? The phenomenon occurs here at times. A limitation of the implementation; the machine is temporarily too busy to update the pointer? Regards, ... P.L. -- 48.7693 N, 123.3053 W tel: +1 604 670 0140

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A new dialect? Oberon+ (OBX)
by Liam Proven 29 Jul '21

29 Jul '21

https://oberon-lang.github.io/ -- Sent from my smartphone. Please pardon brevity & typos.

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Re (2): Copy or reinstall A2?
by peter＠easthope.ca 27 Jul '21

27 Jul '21

From: Liam Proven <lproven(a)gmail.com> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 09:54:12 +0200 > Doesn't anyone run A2 directly on x86? I Have but LinuxA2 is convenient & flexible. A Linux machine and an A2 machine can be networked. Otherwise have the two systems on one machine. Linux with LinuxA2, Windows with WinA2, etc. Did you see my 2nd reply? http://lists.inf.ethz.ch/pipermail/oberon/2021/015968.html Incidentally, the Fox compiler in A2 is a cross compiler. A relatively small investment of making a back end for the RISC machine would allow Fox to produce RISC object code. Regards, ... P.L. -- 48.7693 N, 123.3053 W tel: +1 604 670 0140

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Re: [Oberon] ARM Varieties (was: Copy or reinstall A2?)
by Chris Burrows 26 Jul '21

26 Jul '21

> -----Original Message----- > From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces@lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of > Liam Proven > Sent: Thursday, 22 July 2021 12:38 AM > To: ETH Oberon and related systems > Subject: Re: [Oberon] Re (2): Copy or reinstall A2? > > > Incidentally, the Fox compiler in A2 is a cross compiler. A > > relatively small investment of making a back end for the RISC > > machine would allow Fox to produce RISC object code. > > Which particular RISC machine do you have in mind? > I assumed by saying *the* RISC machine to this audience he meant Wirth's RISC5. However, if that is so, I would not categorise the task as a 'relatively small investment'. > I was aware of this, yes, and I was considering trying to produce an > experimental ARM executable and seeing if I could run it on a Raspberry Pi. > I know it will not have any I/O without drivers for USB etc., but > maybe if I could get as far as writing something to the screen, that would be progress. > Good luck with that! The ARM company have designed a wide range of different architectures with varying degrees of (in)compatibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_microarchitectures AFAICS the ARM compiler in A2 targets the StrongArm architecture developed by DEC in the 1990s which belongs to the ARM8 family. ARM architectures used by the various versions of Raspberry Pi include ARM11, Cortex-A7, Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A72 Regards, Chris Burrows CFB Software https://www.astrobe.com

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Re (2): Re (2): Accessibility of FPGA configuration to V5 system.
by peter＠easthope.ca 26 Jul '21

26 Jul '21

From: Michael Schierl <schierlm(a)gmx.de> Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 19:29:45 +0200 > It would be possible to build a RISC machine that can change while the > OS is running. The current version does not provide that capability. Very helpful clarification. Thanks. The idea of changing the machine during operation seemed relevant to a specific problem. Probably better to address entirely in software. The problem isn't Oberon specific but if there is an interest I can explain more. From: "Skulski, Wojciech" <skulski(a)pas.rochester.edu> Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 18:53:47 +0000 > ... first spend a couple weeks reading the official FPGA data sheets > and User Guides for different aspects of the FPGA, followed by a few > weeks of reading the vendors' fora, ... Appealing and I don't doubt the value but Andr Fischer has given permission to put his Oberon Tutorial in the wikibook and that is my current effort. Regards, ... P.L. -- 48.7693 N 123.3053 W tel: +1 604 670 0140

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Re (2): Accessibility of FPGA configuration to V5 system.
by peter＠easthope.ca 24 Jul '21

24 Jul '21

From: Michael Schierl <schierlm(a)gmx.de> Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2021 15:21:45 +0200 > The V5 system treats the RISC5 processor as a black box. It is not > aware whether it is implemented as FPGA, as an ASIC or an emulator. Understood. Although obviously I would have to learn far more to re-implement on a new FPGA or to make another emulator and etc. > While there is LOLA, it will only output Verilog and there are no > tools in V5 to compile these to a bitstream of any FPGA model. A limitation of software implementation. (?) > Also, the processor does not expose any way of altering (parts of) the > bitstream it is running from. In other words, the host RISC machine can not change while the OS is running? At the fundamental level, a gate in the array is in one of two states. The state of a gate can't be switched while the system is running? How is that prevented? Thx, ... P.L. -- 48.7693 N 123.3053 W tel: +1 604 670 0140

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Accessibility of FPGA configuration to V5 system.
by peter＠easthope.ca 24 Jul '21

24 Jul '21

Hi, Can the V5 system ascertain the configuration of the host FPGA? Can the V5 system change the configuration of the host FPGA? Thx, ... P.L. -- 48.7693 N 123.3053 W tel: +1 604 670 0140

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