[Oberon] Standalone BootLoader format

[Andreas Pirklbauer]

    > I don’t why ORP.Module sets dc := 8 to leave space for 7 entries.

Hi Jörg,

1) It’s actually not dc := 8 in ORP which leaves space for 7 entries.
What dc := 8 does is to simply set the address of the very *first*
variable of a standalone program (variable x in the example below)
at absolute memory address 8, leaving the 2 words at Mem[0] and
Mem[4] untouched.

    MODULE* M;
      VAR x: INTEGER;    (*stored at absolute memory address 8*)
    BEGIN x := 11
    END M.

    ORP.Compile M.Mod/s ~
    ORTool.DecObj M.rsc ~

2) What leaves space for 7 entries is the code in ORG.Open, which
defines the *code* area of a standalone program as follows:

   - code[0] contains the "B 7" jump, i.e. a branch to code[8]
   - code[1] is set to 0 (this is unused currently)
   - code[2] to code[7] start out as 0 (variable space)
   - code[8] contains the first instruction of the standalone program

So, IF (the code area of) a standalone program HAPPENS to be
loaded at absolute address 0, then we have ADR(x) = ADR(code[2]).

   0   E7000007  B       7             ; code[0]
   1   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; code[1], unused
   2   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; code[2], ADR(code[2]) = ADR(x)
   3   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; code[3]
   4   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; ..
   5   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; ..
   6   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; ..
   7   00000000  MOV  R0  R0  R0       ; code[7]
   8   5E00FFC0  MOV SP  R0    -64     ; first instruction of standalone prg
   9   4000000B  MOV  R0  R0     11
  10   41000000  MOV  R1  R0      0
  11   A0100008  STR   R0  R1       8
  12   40000000  MOV  R0  R0      0
  13   C7000000  B  R0

Of course, the bootloader (BootLoad.Mod) is NOT loaded at absolute
address 0, but is rather placed in ROM at address -8192. So for the
bootloader, the six words code[2] to code[7] are set to zero and are
effectively wasted. This is not a big deal though.

If the bootloader HAD any global variables, they would be placed
at absolute memory addresses 8 upwards. But of course, it doesn’t
have any absolute variables, because the very task of the bootloader
is to overwrite the memory area starting at absolute address 0 with
the pre-linked binary of the inner core (Kernel, FileDir, Files, Modules).
This is, in fact, the reason why the bootloader does not HAVE any
global vartiables - they would be overwritten.

All this is explained in section 10 beginning at page 9 of:

http://github.com/andreaspirklbauer/Oberon-extended/blob/master/Documentation/The-Oberon-system-building-tools.pdf
   
Note: ORX.WriteCode M.rsc M.code ~ can be used to extract the code
section of a standalone program.