[Oberon] Inexpensive Hardware: Cost vs Objectives

[Chris Burrows]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
> jwr at robrts.net
> Sent: Tuesday, 16 February 2016 2:12 PM
> To: oberon at lists.inf.ethz.ch
> Subject: [Oberon] Inexpensive Hardware: Cost vs Objectives
> 
> Summary Statement: The various hardware platforms supporting Oberon
> were designed with different objectives in mind, and differ in what
> purposes they support most effectively. 

Excellent overview!

> 
> Paul Reed and Victor Yurkovsky designed the OberonStation to provide
> a "minimal" Spartan 3 FPGA development board which contained all
> features needed to support a clean and complete port of the Project
> Oberon code from the Digilent Spartan 3 Starter board. It contained
> the 8 LEDs in a row, the static ram required, the keyboard and mouse
> interfaces, the microSD card interface, the RF network port, etc.
> which were formerly available using the Digilent board. 

Just a minor point: First the OberonStation, and now the Pepino, are an
improvement on the original Digilent Spartan 3 Starter board in that the
Mouse and Keyboard PS/2 sockets, and the microSD card socket are all
integrated on the boards. The Spartan 3 required an add-on board or some
other way of connecting these peripherals. 

Cheers,
Chris