OMI software

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DGDanforth
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OMI software

Post by DGDanforth »

It occurs to me that Oberon Microsystems Inc (OMI) has some important software outside of the BlackBox framework. Specifically they have a tool to create the interface for dlls. I believe they are not completely happy with that tool but used it to set up things such as (I believe) WinApi. I believe such a tool would be valuable for the BlackBox community.

Secondly, in the long run it might make sense to port BlackBox to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) simply for making BlackBox platform independent. There are many issues here but obtaining the byte code generator for BlackBox (Oberon II) would be useful for experimentation. I see there is this http://www.uni-vologda.ac.ru/JOB/ . I was thinking more of Esmertec.

In general I think we should approach the remnants of OMI for any software they might have that would be useful to us.

Comments?

-Doug Danforth
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DGDanforth
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Re: OMI software

Post by DGDanforth »

I see I am 4 years out of date and that Esmertec acquired Purple Labs to become
Myriad Group http://www.myriadgroup.com/ which is probably far to specific to mobile devices for us.
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ReneK
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Re: OMI software

Post by ReneK »

I agree with your principal vision here.

We could also start by integrating GPCP into BB, or rather building the BB framework on GPCP, I think.

When we talk about mobile devices we have to keep in mind, that though Android, f.i. uses Java, it does not use the JVM!
Peter Kushnir
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Re: OMI software

Post by Peter Kushnir »

ReneK wrote:We could also start by integrating GPCP into BB, or rather building the BB framework on GPCP, I think.
As you will find here http://forum.oberoncore.ru/viewtopic.ph ... lit=bb+jvm the aim of building BlackBox over gpcp runtime is quite difficult because non-native nature of jvm or .net clr, so we can do some "interface" clone, but it will not give us BlackBox. Maybe llvm-version of gpcp soon becomes available and the situation will change.
Here is some auxulary work started https://bitbucket.org/petryxa/bb-fw

For my opinion, usage of jvm or .net components from BlackBox over different IPC-mechanisms is more perspective. Integrating any other CP/Oberon-compiler into BlackBox is also interesting.
cfbsoftware
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Re: OMI software

Post by cfbsoftware »

Peter Kushnir wrote: Integrating any other CP/Oberon-compiler into BlackBox is also interesting.
I implemented an Oberon compiler (the 2007 revision) to use inhouse in BlackBox. It was very useful when I was originally developing hardware-independent (e.g. Maths) libraries for use in Astrobe. I was able to compare the output from the Windows compiler with the ARM compiler to ensure there were no differences.
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DGDanforth
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Re: OMI software

Post by DGDanforth »

I notice that Niklaus Wirth has released an updated version of Project Oberon where he
now talks extensively about FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Does your software
(Astrobe) bear any resemblance to what Wirth is talking about?

See http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/P ... index.html
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Re: OMI software

Post by cfbsoftware »

Yes - very much so. Astrobe is an Oberon-language aware IDE (syntax-highlighting, auto-capitalisation of keywords, procedure / import navigation facilities etc.) which uses the Oberon compilers originally written by Wirth. I initially converted the source of his 2007 Oberon ARM compiler from Oberon to Gardens Point Component Pascal (GPCP) so I could use Windows to write embedded software to target ARM7 microcontrollers.

I later rewrote the code generator to target the newer ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers and am now in the process of making it compatible with the 2013 revision of the language. I have also recently converted the source of Wirth's latest 2013 Oberon FPGA compiler to GPCP and integrated it into an experimental version of the Astrobe IDE so I can develop software for his FPGA RISC CPU on Windows as well as on the Oberon operating system.

As Component Pascal is virtually a superset of Oberon and the compilers are only a few thousand lines of code it is fairly straightforward to convert them to GPCP. Something similar could be done by somebody if they wanted to integrate the FPGA compiler into BlackBox and use it as their IDE.
Peter Kushnir
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Re: OMI software

Post by Peter Kushnir »

These advances of Astrobe are not so reliable for opensource BlackBox development, because it's closed source and also because BlackBox needs runtime Kernel to be modified for ARM/MIPS/any.
cfbsoftware
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Re: OMI software

Post by cfbsoftware »

I am not suggesting that BlackBox be ported to an ARM, MIPS or whatever platform. That would take a man-year or two to achieve - I can't see the point of bothering.

I was simply suggesting that BlackBox could be used a host development environment for writing software using cross-compilers. Wirth's Project Oberon 2013 FPGA-targeted compiler is totally open source and comprehensively documented. It could be ported to BlackBox in a couple of man-weeks - there are some ETH-compatible BlackBox libraries on Helmut Zinn's site that would probably help.
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Re: OMI software

Post by Ivan Denisov »

cfbsoftware wrote:I am not suggesting that BlackBox be ported to an ARM, MIPS or whatever platform. That would take a man-year or two to achieve - I can't see the point of bothering.

I was simply suggesting that BlackBox could be used a host development environment for writing software using cross-compilers. Wirth's Project Oberon 2013 FPGA-targeted compiler is totally open source and comprehensively documented. It could be ported to BlackBox in a couple of man-weeks - there are some ETH-compatible BlackBox libraries on Helmut Zinn's site that would probably help.
This work is done by Alexander Shiryaev :)
https://github.com/aixp/O7
https://github.com/aixp/ProjectOberon-BlackBox

I am using O7 intensively now.
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