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Project Oberon

projectoberon.com

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Re: Project Oberon

#11

Post by rbanffy »

johndoe0815 wrote: post #9

This project is still a great example of a complete computer design, starting from Niklaus Wirth's own RISC5 CPU (not a RISC-V) and very simple peripherals over the OS, runtime/garbage collector, compiler, GUI and simple example applications. One problem of the original implementation is that it was based on an old Xilinx Spartan 3 development board. This is not only no longer available, but it is one of the few FPGA…

I wonder if it could be ported to the MiSTer platform. It seems to be a very common and friendly device.

Re: Project Oberon

#12

Post by johndoe0815 »

rbanffy wrote: post #11
johndoe0815 wrote: post #9

This project is still a great example of a complete computer design, starting from Niklaus Wirth's own RISC5 CPU (not a RISC-V) and very simple peripherals over the OS, runtime/garbage collector, compiler, GUI and simple example applications. One problem of the original implementation is that it was based on an old Xilinx Spartan 3 development board. This is not only no longer available, but it is one of the few FPGA…

I wonder if it could be ported to the MiSTer platform. It seems to be a very common and friendly device.

This should be possible - Hellwig Geisse (forgot to mention his project, sorry - https://github.com/hgeisse/THM-Oberon) is working on an Oberon port to the Terasic DE2-115 FPGA port, which has an Altera FPGA like the MiSTer. The basis of the MiSTer is a Terasic DE10 Nano FPGA board, which has a more recent Cyclone V FPGA (the DE2-115 has a Cyclone II).

The MiST (MiSTer's predecessor, https://github.com/mist-devel) would also be a nice platform.

More Oberon resources and links can be found here if you are interested: https://riskfive.com/Web_resources.htm

Re: Project Oberon

#13

Post by rob74 »

visviva wrote: post #3

Maybe Project Oberon is widely known to others, but if not, I suggest the title be changed to something like "Project Oberon is a design for a complete desktop computer system from scratch".

I was aware of the Oberon programming language, which is the successor of Modula-2, which is itself the successor of Pascal (all invented by Niklaus Wirth), but it took me a few minutes to remember that there was also an OS and computer system called Oberon. However in a university setting it makes perfect sense to have a complete "package" of hardware, OS and programming language which you can design and understand "from the ground up".

Re: Project Oberon

#15

Post by pjmlp »

badsectoracula wrote: post #10
pjmlp wrote: post #7

The Oberon channel has several videos of Oberon in action, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Oberon+Chan... While Oberon was quite cool, people should also learn about its Xerox influence, "Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dt7NG38V4 Also dive into what happened afterwards, Oberon-2, Active Oberon, Zonnon,... Active Oberon could be considered quite modern, also makes the d…

While these are called "Oberon", judging from the screenshots (i haven't watched the videos), they seem to be way beyond the minimalistic nature of the Oberon system shown in Project Oberon. I think the emulator linked at the bottom left side is a better way to check out Oberon in action as you can easily (well, after you figure out how things get compiled, etc :-P) see it in practice and how a few individually simpl…

They are Oberon, the system that was described on the first edition of Project Oberon was the version 1.

ETHZ researchers and Niklaus Wirth then iterated further on the Oberon (the OS) and Oberon (the language).

The definitive Oberon (the OS) version that still uses the plain Oberon (the language) from original project was System 3, which is what those videos relate to.

In Active Oberon used to write AOS (BlueBottle OS), you can still relauch System 3 as a nested OS.

Re: Project Oberon

#16

Post by badsectoracula »

pjmlp wrote: post #15
badsectoracula wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these are called "Oberon", judging from the screenshots (i haven't watched the videos), they seem to be way beyond the minimalistic nature of the Oberon system shown in Project Oberon. I think the emulator linked at the bottom left side is a better way to check out Oberon in action as you can easily (well, after you figure out how things get compiled, etc :-P) see it in practice and how a few individually simpl…

They are Oberon, the system that was described on the first edition of Project Oberon was the version 1. ETHZ researchers and Niklaus Wirth then iterated further on the Oberon (the OS) and Oberon (the language). The definitive Oberon (the OS) version that still uses the plain Oberon (the language) from original project was System 3, which is what those videos relate to. In Active Oberon used to write AOS (BlueBottle…

Yes they are Oberon too but my point is that they've evolved and added a ton of stuff that go further than the minimalistic nature of the linked site. The "Project Oberon" in the site doesn't even have overlapping windows or color for example.

Re: Project Oberon

#17

Post by jkonline »

I find it hard to cpnclude how "useful and usable in a production environment" an OS project can be, when the project website still isn't using SSL/ HTTPS.

Re: Project Oberon

#19

Post by carapace »

Project Oberon is awesome!

I found the Project Oberon book in SFSU library and read it cover to cover. Such a tight, elegant system. Pretty much complete: Oberon OS includes compiler for Oberon language!

Language was self-hosted (compiler written in itself) and Prof. Wirth had a heuristic: no feature could be added to the lang/compiler if it made compiling the compiler slower.

There are several emulators, in C, JS, Java, and Python, and there's Verilog so you can burn to FPGA and make a real workstation. People have.

The system has two kinds of OOP. There is the C++/Java/Python/etc. kind where you basically add methods to a record type, and there is the old school Smalltalk message-passing kind, where elements of the OS communicate through an extendable message bus.

The GUI system, especially with the "Gadgets" subsystem, is mind-blowing. It would take too long to go over it at the moment, but there are features there that still haven't made it into mainstream GUI systems. If I get a minute later today I'll come back and add a note detailing some of the awesome if someone else hasn't already filled in the picture.

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