[Oberon] Astrobe for FPGA RISC5 Oberon

[Chris Burrows]

I am currently developing a version of the Astrobe IDE which hosts the
Project Oberon FPGA RISC5 compiler on Windows. 

With the work done so far I can now develop RISC5 Oberon software on Windows
using all the Astrobe IDE features. When the edit / compile cycle is
complete the resulting code can be synchronised with the Project Oberon
system running on FPGA hardware via the RS232 connection.

A single Astrobe command (Build / Rebuild) can be used to automatically
recompile ALL 23 core modules of the Project Oberon operating system - about
9000 lines in total. The whole process (including generating disassembly
listings) takes 700 millseconds on my PC.

The eventual aim is develop a minimal embedded version of the Project Oberon
OS e.g. just the Kernel, loader, filesystem, SPI, RS232 and SD card support.
As development is done on Windows the higher-level layers of the OS with the
user-interaction features e.g. GUI, display, VGA, mouse, keyboard, compiler,
editor etc will not be required. This should be easier to port to simpler
FPGA development boards than those currently supported by the full Project
Oberon OS. 

When it is publicly released later this year the software will be made
available for no cost. Anyone who is interested can get the latest progress
reports and release announcements by following the forum "Astrobe for FPGA
RISC5" on the Astrobe discussion forum:

http://www.astrobe.com/forum/

Regards,

Chris Burrows
CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com