[Oberon] Oberon System on the FPGA (was Oberon-1 or Oberon-2?)

[chris]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2014 10:35:14 -0400, skulski at pas.rochester.edu wrote:
> So, never say never while talking to the HW person. We can do anything.
> The question is "can you program the hardware that we developed". In
> particular, "can anybody port the OP2 compiler to RISC5, or to make the
> Wirth compiler understand Oberon-2"?

I am sure it can be done, but I am also sure that it will be difficult 
to motivate anybody to do it. I see a chicken and egg problem here. 
Unless there is a board available, why would anyone write a compiler 
for practically non  existing hardware. For me at least, doing my own 
board is not an option.

Nothing against the recommended book, but for it's price I can have two 
Banana Pis at my doorstep tomorrow and start coding immediately if i 
wanted to.

I understand that for your very special application the FPGA is the way 
to go. From what I see at your webpage you have done some impressive 
hardware. What I still not understand is: what is the essential benefit 
of the Oberon System/Compiler in your case. You have ucLinux (I 
believe) running and 600 MHz CPU or so; compared to that the RISC5 is a 
small toy running at 25 MHz, I think.

It is lacking a lot of features from the core like 8 and 16 Bit 
arithmetics to the peripherals like ethernet, color, etc. and the 
device drivers necessary.

Adding all this, probably enhancing the instruction set and bringing 
this up to reasonable speed, i wonder is this still a "piece of cake"?

Greetings, Christian