[Oberon] Availability of OberonStation

[Chris Burrows]

> From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
> Ken Boak
> Sent: Monday, 18 January 2016 10:30 PM
> To: ETH Oberon and related systems
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] Availability of OberonStation
> 
> Could you point me to details of how you have handled keyboard/mouse
> and video on the Arty.
> 

The subset of Project Oberon 2013 that we ported to the Arty is intended to be used for embedded controller systems that do not need keyboard / mouse or video. If you want to use those you will need to get one of the following boards instead:

* OberonStation
* Saanlima Electronics' Pipistrello + 1MB SRAM Oberon Wing 
* Digilent Spartan-3 Starter Kit (no longer available new).

Links to these systems and more information on the embedded subset vs. the original complete workstation versions of Project Oberon 2013 are here:

http://www.astrobe.com/RISC5

 
> 
> I presume that your uSD is effectively taken care of with the on-
> board QuadSPI 16MB Nand Flash?
> 

No. The microSD card is taken care of by using a six-pin microSD adapter or breakout board connected to the Arty PMOD JA port. Various forms of these are avaiable for $5 - $15 from electronic parts vendors (e.g. SparkFun, AdaFruit, Little Bird Electronics, Pololu, WaveShare etc. etc.) The SD card has more capacity than the Nand Flash and is easier to back up. Also no new Verilog code had to be developed to get it to work.

> Has anyone on  the mailing list devised any simple way of
> benchmarking the performance of Oberon against other known systems?
> 

Yes. We use an Oberon version of the Lilith Modula-2 benchmark to compare all of the systems supported by Astrobe. The Modula-2 source is included in Appendix 2 of ETH Report Nr 40 - The Personal Computer Lilith. Apr 1981. N. Wirth  "The Yellow Report". You can download a copy from:

http://www.cfbsoftware.com/modula2/

Regards,
Chris

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