Embedded Oberon for Real-time Systems
Oberon RTS is experimental work in progress to adapt and extend Embedded Project Oberon for the use as real-time operating system for controllers.
Embedded Project Oberon was created, and is maintained, by Chris Burrows of Astrobe fame. It’s a brilliant concept, and implementation thereof, to make the Oberon system and language available on commercially available target Xilinx FPGA boards implementing the Project Oberon RISC5 processor. The editing and compilation of Oberon modules is done on a Windows PC, while the board only runs a minimal core of the Oberon system, called Embedded Project Oberon. Astrobe for RISC5 provides a console, connected to the remote board via a serial link, to upload the compiled modules, plus a terminal to execute commands on the remote board.
Project Oberon was created by Niklaus Wirth, Peter Gutknecht, and Paul Reed. Project Oberon comprises the Oberon language, the Oberon operating system, as well as the RISC5 processor, accompanied by a book describing the whole technology stack. The source code of all Oberon software as well as the Verilog design files are available, too, allowing to study and understand everything down to the bits and logic gates.
Embedded Project Oberon is directly based on Project Oberon, and it offers the same openness as regards availability of Oberon source code and Verilog design files. Check out Astrobe for RISC5. Chris makes this complete environment freely available. Amazing.
THM-Oberon is an alternative architecture and implementation of the RISC5 processor.
Fair warning: Chris makes sure that Astrobe for RISC5 and Embedded Oberon are solid and consistent across several target boards. I don’t. It’s explorative and experimental work, and Oberon modules, Verilog designs, as well as the texts and descriptions on this site might be incomplete and will be evolving.
GitHub repos: I plan to make all sources available on my GitHub repos, https://github.com/ygrayne/oberon-rts-hw and https://github.com/ygrayne/oberon-rts-sw, which are still set to private as of now.