Oberon Digest, Vol 104, выпуск 22 (Guenter Dotzel)

26 Dec 2012


      26.12.2012 13:00, oberon-request@lists.inf.ethz.ch
...
Send Oberon mailing list submissions to
  oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
  https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
  oberon-request@lists.inf.ethz.ch
You can reach the person managing the list at
  oberon-owner@lists.inf.ethz.ch
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Oberon digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: Oberon Digest, Vol 104, Issue 22 (Guenter Dotzel)
   2. Re: The Oberon answer to Arduino (Jan Verhoeven)
   3. Re: The Oberon answer to Arduino (Arnim Littek)
   4. Re: The Oberon answer to Arduino (Jan Verhoeven)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2012 12:04:37 +0100
From: Guenter Dotzel <gd@modulaware.com>
Subject: Re: [Oberon] Oberon Digest, Vol 104, Issue 22
To: oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch
Message-ID: <50D98845.2030108@modulaware.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
I already tried recently but failed badly to encourage people on this list to only quote what is really essential to see what you are replying to.
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2012 17:43:39 +0100
From: Jan Verhoeven <jan@verhoeven272.nl>
Subject: Re: [Oberon] The Oberon answer to Arduino
To: ETH Oberon and related systems <oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <201212251743.39145.jan@verhoeven272.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="utf-8"
On Monday 24 December 2012 23:29:25 Aubrey.McIntosh@alumni.utexas.net 
wrote:
...
I am getting some hard questions on my KickStarter
Which was to be expected. Easy money is gone down the drain since the 
americans sold out-of-control-mortgages to european banks. And they 
believed them!
...
why would someone buy my item instead of an Arduino.
They won't. Your project breaths just one thing: hobbyist. Nobody will 
invest a penny in it.
The arduino was at the right time in the right place among the right 
kind of people using the right kind of tools.
I was there long time ago. And was too soon (and the wrong audience). 
You are too late. You cannot catch up with Arduino. Arduino is a mature 
system with a large installed user base. Websites, wiki's, third party 
suppliers, available on dealextreme. Yours is a nice idea, at most.
The days of designing your own hardware to sell to others are over (for 
over a decade). Arduino was in the nick of time and within the right 
(braindead) audience.
Have you seen this: http://www.futurlec.com/ET-PIC_Stamp.shtml
ETT have a lot of affordable MCU circuits, off the shelf. These boards 
work. No need to debug the hardware (as is still the case in your 
Controls, I guess), just focus on the software.
AVR : PIC = Cat : Dog
...
I suppose that I envision something like a programmers VOM. Something
to program chips via ICSP, step through simple logic sequences, safely
accept user programs to do innovative things.
Ah, you mean http://www.futurlec.com/ET-ARM_Stamp_Board.shtml
Try to beat that at USD 25. You don't want to know how ridiculously 
cheap airmail rates from Thailand are. http://www.ett.co.th/
...
So this brings to mind the question, should I go with a MIPS
processor?
Go with Futurlec. They supply working boards for the price of the CPU 
plus the bare board.
...
compilers to the Component Pascal environment,
Nope. There used to be a Mod51 Modula-2 compiler for the 8051. Not sure 
if they sold a single copy of it.
...
board that competes sort of laterally with the Arduino?
Not in your life time. It's not very polite to say so, but if I would 
say the opposite I would be gambling with your money.
...
I think this could be the killer app that I have thought Oberon
needed for the past 20 years.
The days of Oberon are over. If Oberon HAD days at all. It's a fun issue 
reading about and talking about. But nobody wants to program a 
controller in a safe way. A controller is programmed in assembler so 
you can do whatever you want.
If things get hairy, you buy a creditcard sized PC and there Oberon may 
come in handy.
...
I hope you guys have an enlightened moment about this soon.  I'd love
to see a community project come together.
Look at embedded artists. Can you come up with something like this?
http://embeddedartists.com/products/boards/lpc11d14_qsb.php
I know the answer to my question. No single developer can. Look at the 
price and the features.
-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Jan Verhoeven
http://www.verhoeven272.nl
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 12:55:27 +1300
From: Arnim Littek <arnim@actrix.gen.nz>
Subject: Re: [Oberon] The Oberon answer to Arduino
To: oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch
Message-ID: <201212261255.27430.arnim@actrix.gen.nz>
Content-Type: Text/Plain;  charset="iso-8859-15"
Interesting thread.  I've been lurking on the Oberon list for years - this is 
the first to elicit a response.
What makes Oberon attractive?  The ability to go to high level programming 
with less fuss and code infrastructure than most languages.  The fact that it 
can be taken to low levels is also particularly attractive to the kinds of 
folk interested in Arduinos and PICs.
Some Arduinos are built on interesting micros, all Arduinos are built on 
micros better than the 8-bit PICs, which are IMHO relics of the past that 
belong in a museum.  (Unfortunately I have to work with them professionally - 
cough cough)
However, the PIC32 on the MIPS architecture is likely to be a completely 
different beast - I've looked at it for a long time without finding reason to go 
there, because the PIC32 engines don't do low power all that well (yet?).  I 
do like MIPS, and think that would be in some senses, esp. in terms of 
teaching, a better platform than the low power ARM micros in the same space.
MIPS support is wider than Microchip, fortunately.  Making a decent compiler 
for MIPS is realistic, and adding Oberon to the list could be a good thing for 
many people, including those of us on this list with an embedded slant.
Arnim
On Tuesday 25 December 2012 11:29:25 Aubrey.McIntosh@alumni.utexas.net wrote:
...
I am getting some hard questions on my KickStarter
project<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1378252804/681865516?token=bfb4
0102> .
They are basically of the form, why would someone buy my item instead of an
Arduino.  These questions came from people I respect, whom I asked to
comment, so I want to have a strong and respectful answer.
I have done some reading, and I have read some pretty testy exchanges
between some PIC enthusiasts and the Arduino enthusiasts.  Basically, the
Arduino folks say that being able to use their wire it up user interface is
compelling and the PIC folks are in the past, and the PIC folks are saying
that the libraries are closed and have some critical design bugs and they
want an architecture where you can control stuff down to the bits.
At one level, my project is about a teaching tool.  However, just knowing
about the parts is not enough.  I want the project to also be a nicely
designed tool.  I suppose that I envision something like a programmers VOM.
 Something to program chips via ICSP, step through simple logic sequences,
safely accept user programs to do innovative things.
I suppose I have to add that it needs to fill a niche that the Arduino does
not fill.
So this brings to mind the question, should I go with a MIPS processor?
 They are available for about $5 each, and there is an Oberon compiler for
them.  There is a similar situation for the SPARC, the 68HC11, and other
processors.
It would be trivial to load commands in the Oberon environment to either of
these processors.  They would stay as part of the firmware, until they are
freed up.  There would have to be some small design change to have the code
in EEPROM and the volatile data in RAM, including the initialization flags.
....
So, does it make more sense to use the legacy, V4 Oberon system with a few
communication tools thrown in to accomplish this?  I am confident that I
can pull this off, and I have done a lot of the background work to do so.
Does it make more sense to update these compilers to the Component Pascal
environment, so that there is a product with a lot of modern cross
compilers, a nice IDE, and a custom made board that competes sort of
laterally with the Arduino?
I can envision an interface made out of something like Kepler and the
Hardware compiler language whose name I can't remember, to make a complete
system, but in the Oberon flavor.
I think this could be the killer app that I have thought Oberon needed for
the past 20 years.  I hope you guys have an enlightened moment about this
soon.  I'd love to see a community project come together.
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 02:05:32 +0100
From: Jan Verhoeven <jan@verhoeven272.nl>
Subject: Re: [Oberon] The Oberon answer to Arduino
To: ETH Oberon and related systems <oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch>
Message-ID: <201212260205.33026.jan@verhoeven272.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="iso-8859-1"
On Wednesday 26 December 2012 00:55:27 Arnim Littek wrote:
...
Interesting thread.  I've been lurking on the Oberon list for years -
this is the first to elicit a response.
Arnim
And now for the $6000 question: will YOU buy it, HERE and NOW?
Because that's the only thing that counts. Positive feedback does not 
work, as you might have experienced.
-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Jan Verhoeven
http://www.verhoeven272.nl
------------------------------
--
Oberon@lists.inf.ethz.ch mailing list for ETH Oberon and related systems
https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon
End of Oberon Digest, Vol 104, Issue 23
***************************************
-- реклама -----------------------------------------------------------
Акция в Книжном Клубе - мировые бестселлеры по 10 грн!
Доставка почтой. Оплата по факту http://bookclub.ua/join/

vic

tags

participants (1)