[Oberon] Re: Active Oberon on ARM CPUs

[Chris at mmi01.absamail.co.za]

> Yes very interested, but this would be a much bigger task than porting
> ETH-oberon or AOS to a standard PC.

Bernhard wrote:
> AOS/Bluebottle on ARM has existed for almost 6 years now as I have originally
> ported the (x86) AOS to a DNARD computer with a StrongARM processor. If you're
> interested, here's a link to my thesis and the sources:
>   http://aces.snu.ac.kr/~bernhard/bluebottle/armaos/01.ETH.Egger.ARMAos.pdf
>   http://aces.snu.ac.kr/~bernhard/bluebottle/armaos/ARMRelease.zip
> 
01.ETH.Egger.ARMAos.pdf is very impressive and I appreciate the effort to keep
compatability with ETH-OAS's x86 work, to get 'leaverage'.

Presently under linux, ARMRelease.zip tells:  Archive:  a.zip
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.

But I'll investigate the *.zip further.

I don't know what hardware to get.
I'd want to take a successive refinement approach, eg.:
- hex code a minimal loop which confirms eg. that input to port1 is echoed out to port2
- perhaps confirm that the ample linux/gcc tools can produce something
- and only then start building minimal AOS 'confirmatory utilities' and documenting
  them for use of later collaborators.
  
> > Apart from any AOS considerations, where would one get 
> > documentation for the boot/load method.  Which I'd want
> > to test, in a minimum way first.
> 
> I suggest you have a look at the bootup code in wear.AosSysSrc.zip, specifically
> wearARM.Relocator.Mod and ARM.AosBoot.Mod. Those are the two modules that bring
> the board into a specific state. The kernel above is +/- the same for all boards
> (except device drivers, of course)

Are these files in the ARMRelease.zip ?

> Since I have left, ETH has been working on new ARM-based projects, so you might
> want to wait for Sven's release. However, since documenting stuff is not one of
> the strong sides of us, you might wanna have a look at my diploma thesis to get
> an idea what's going on.
> 
Of course, people publishing theses or releasing a product have time specific events,
but I try to act as a very open, continually evolving collaborator.  So I'm puting my
log, and especially what goes wrong [to be avoided by others] to: 
  http://www.edgar-schwarz.de/mm/ArmOberon

Thanks,

== Chris Glur.