[Oberon] re: USB, bloat, LNO, SCSI/IDE & etc.

[John Drake]

--- easlab at absamail.co.za wrote:

> shark at gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca wrote:-
> > This is a little disconnected but the topics 
> > are too interesting to pass up.
> 
> All the topics are related by some
> higher/over-arching principles.
> 
> 
> > jj> Someone should tackle a native port to the old
> 680x0 Macs ...
> > 
> > Nice.  Has any Oberon or Aos display driver 
> > ever been written outside the ETH?
> 
> Do you mean "has any display-driver been written in
> the Oberon
> language [I'm guessing that Aos has not yet reached
> outside 
> the ETH], other than those written at ETH" ?
> Well yes, since the Oberon language HAS somewhat
> been used 
> outside of ETH -  what about [? what's it called =
> Blackbox ?].
> And if you're thinking of porting from such source
> to ETH-oberon,
> then porting from the bigger source-populations of
> Modula,
> [turbo] Pascal and even C becomes viable. 

BlackBox (originally Oberon/F) isn't/wasn't "native"
so it didn't have to worry about low level stuff
like writing display drivers.  Oberon has been
ported to run hosted under MacOS just like it
can run hosted under WinOS, Linux ect.  (In fact
the first version of Oberon/F ran on both Windows
and Mac).

Anyway there is information on how to write
native Oberon video drivers.  

http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/native/WebDisplays.html

I suppose anyone who knows Oberon and knows how
to write video drivers could do this.  (Of course
that's a small subset of a subset.)
 
> Trying to install the newer [12 Jan 2002] version of
> LNO is an example,
> you have to struggle over several hurdles to get to
> a useable level.
> Which is one very good reason NOT to update.
> Every time you update, you need to relearn/reset
> your personal
> 'settings'.  Moving house/spouse is traumatic.

Well, creating an "MNO" (MacOS native Oberon) 
wouldn't require writing a video driver just like
LNO doesn't require writing a video driver.
I guess it just depends on how "bare metal"
someone wants to get.  In fact the "Darwin"
port of Oberon might actually be what you want
if that's the case (except Dawin Oberon requires
a later version of MacOS than "older 680X0 Macs.)

Regards,

John M. Drake

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