A Few Beginner Questions

Newcomers to Astrobe and Oberon are welcome to ask any beginner-level questions here
Post Reply
captbill
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2014 2:57 pm

A Few Beginner Questions

Post by captbill » Sun Jun 29, 2014 1:52 am

Hello,
I am very interested in Astrobe and have a few beginner questions:

1) Can Astrobe target the Arduino Due (AT91SAM3X8E cortex-m3)? Seems like I read that the only issue is flashing the rom?
2) If not, which development board/platform would you recommend that is reasonably powerful, yet 'newby friendly'?

3) Do I still have time to get the cortex-m4 Astrobe relese by purchasing the m3 version?

Thanks

cfbsoftware
Site Admin
Posts: 493
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:30 pm
Contact:

Re: A Few Beginner Questions

Post by cfbsoftware » Fri Jul 04, 2014 9:34 am

I'm sorry about the delay in replying - I only just discovered your post was waiting for approval. I have now updated your profile so that any future posts from you will not have to go through the approval process.

1. The only Cortex-M3 development boards we currently support are from NXP.

2. I would recommend either the mbed or LPCXpresso boards / platforms as a reasonably powerful, yet 'newby friendly' board.

3. Yes - you still have time to get the Cortex-M4 Astrobe release by purchasing the M3 version. But you will need to be quick as the release date should only be days away now ...

captbill
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2014 2:57 pm

Re: A Few Beginner Questions

Post by captbill » Mon Jul 07, 2014 1:31 am

Thanks Professor Burrows,
WOW. What an amazing development platform. Nothing to 'configure'. No makefiles, endless 'compiler switches', components to install, yada yada yada. A few days with Oberon and I am 'off the ground' and onto programming something. Not so with any other language I have seen, at least not of this caliber. A true 'marvel of engineering', to say the least.

I went with the mbed nxp1768. How simple can you get? What boggles my mind is the 1)speed of the Oberon compiler and 2)the executable size. The "blinker" demo for the Java (Arduino) creates an executable size of 10,500@ bytes vs. Astrobe/Oberon size of 156 bytes!

I am still feeling my way around Oberon coming from Freepascal/Lazarus. Still a little disoriented with the 'constructor' concept in Oberon. But all in all, WOW, amazing and congratulations on Astrobe. It's truly an 'engineering mavel' for sure.

Now...what to do with this pile of Arduinos?

Cheers

cfbsoftware
Site Admin
Posts: 493
Joined: Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:30 pm
Contact:

Re: A Few Beginner Questions

Post by cfbsoftware » Mon Jul 07, 2014 11:35 am

Thanks Bill - your comments are very much appreciated although I must acknowledge that a significant amount of the credit is due to Prof Wirth.

If you do have any 'newbie' questions related to the Oberon language itself feel free to ask them here,

Cheers,
Chris

Post Reply