Any suggestions for running simple Oberon-0 programs on the MacOSX command-line ? EIther by emulating its RISC processor or by changing the Oberon-0 compiler ? I prefer not to load the entire Oberon system (for which there do exist emulators).

Regards,

Adriaan van Os

Hi Adriaan,

whats about a Oberon-0 compiler compiling to Forth? And then Forth to MacOSX? (RetroForth, Swift or whatever)

That may sound silly, but such a Compiler would help a lot to port Obern to other platforms resp Microcontrollers etc. For example to the Propeller II ....

Kind Regards

Markus

Any suggestions for running simple Oberon-0 programs on the MacOSX command-line ? EIther by emulating its RISC processor or by changing the Oberon-0 compiler ? I prefer not to load the entire Oberon system (for which there do exist emulators).

To answer my own question .... maybe the simplest option is to port the Oberon-0 compiler code to FPC and to link-in the Oberon-0 provided RISC module, which contains an interpreter for the target RISC processor, as described in the Wirth's Compiler Construction book.

Regards,

Adriaan van Os

Gcc has already been ported to the propeller II, (and it runs on the original propeller too), so porting other languages should be "relatively" easy.  I've not made the attempt to port anything yet though, mostly because I've been out of the propeller world for a couple years, and now that the version 2 is out, I'm trying to reestablish some working environments so I can use the propeller 2.  I have bought some of the mystery boxes, which gave me a propeller 2 edge board with 32MB of ram, but I don't think I have an actual propeller 2 just yet.  Needing others to id things for me is making the list of products I have hard to create, but I'm getting there.

Anyway, since gcc exists, any compiler that uses gcc as the backend should be possible to port.  I've thought about porting FPC, but I'd have to start with a version that's already meant for smaller systems, I do believe someone posted a link to one a few months ago, perhaps that one could be used as a jumping off point, would be interesting to see pascal available for the propeller boards.

You are right there are in between many compilers for the Propeller 2 around. My idea would be a to have an Oberon system on the Propeller itself. Developing on the target itself is unbeatable clever. Is started 35 Years ago with the 8051-AH Basic processor and later on similar systems.

The Propeller 2 has already a built in Forth which is already a fine thing, but I am sure the Processor is powerful enough to run also a full Oberon in the latest flavor of the RISC5 system.
The Oberon0 compiler would be necessary as bootstrap for a full Oberon system. A native Oberon0 to Propeller ASM compiler would be fine, but maybe it would be easier to write first an Oberon0 to PropForth compiler.

Kind Regards

Markus

What does Oberon and Forth have to do with the FreePascal compiler? 😕

Ralf

Ralf Quint wrote

On 4/19/2023 1:06 AM, Markus Greim via fpc-pascal wrote:

.
.

Thanks Ralf, that's a fair comment - I suggest moving possible continuation of this discussion to the fpc-other list.

Tomas
(one of FPC mailing list moderators)

Ralf Quint wrote

What does Oberon and Forth have to do with the FreePascal compiler? 😕

1. Niklaus Wirth
2. Strong resemblance between Oberon and Pascal
3. An early version of his book Compiler Construction used Pascal rather than Oberon

There is no relation with Forth, bur I didn't mention it in my original question.

Adriaan van Os

Adriaan van Os via fpc-pascal schrieb am
Do., 20. Apr. 2023, 04:46:

Still no reason that this is discussed on fpc-pascal instead of fpc-other as the former is for *using FPC*.

Regards,
Sven

Well, still, neither one of those IMHO is a valid reason as to why this is discussed on a Free Pascal mailing list, beside possibly on fpc-other, as suggested.

Ralf