[Oberon] The Oberon answer to Arduino

[Jan Verhoeven]

Aubrey,

On Friday 28 December 2012 01:29:33 Aubrey.McIntosh at alumni.utexas.net 
wrote:
> Jan,
>
> Thanks for all of your correspondence.  The links to the boards are
> useful and I am studying them.  I cannot disagree with anything that
> you have posted, and I do want clear and honest remarks.

I sank enough money into valuable projects (i.e. PCB's and parts) in 
which only I was interested, in the end, to be able to warn other 
people thinking about doing the same.

> A question that I must look deeply into is "why not just buy the CFB
> system and a board?"  

Engineering is:

making for a pound, what you can buy for a fiver.

And that is what sets us, engineers, back. After my disappointing 
pinguino software adventure I once again come back from all the free 
stuff. When "free" means "unsupported" it ends up like being 
not-so-free in the end.
Probably the CFB system/boards are the best choice, in all aspects.

> What do I want to *do* with Oberon, anyway?

Two options:

1: a cross compiler for many processors
2: an operating system for a computer with display, mouse and keyboard

As operating system for a controller it is overkill, I guess.

> It is sad indeed to spend as much effort as I did on this project and
> yet to be eclipsed.  I wish I had access to KickStarter back in 2004,
> but that is not the universe that we are in.

I was about to empty my stash of of unused Z80 components with my NSSBC 
project http://fruttenboel.verhoeven272.nl/nssbc/index.html but luckily 
I came to my senses right after receiving the PCB's for the bus 
backplane from China.
Suddenly I realized I wouldn't be able to pull this one off. So I quit 
the project right there. OK, I lost some money in the project but 
continuation would have cost a lot more.  And two nights on the town 
would be expensive as well. And most of THAT would have ended up in the 
toilet...

> I wish I could be a catalyst to bring forth the "Killer Oberon App"
> but I don't see it happening.

Perhaps a stand alone universal micro controller development system 
(programmer, debugger, editor, compiler) written in Oberon.

-- 
Met vriendelijke groeten,

Jan Verhoeven
http://www.verhoeven272.nl