[Coco] OS-9 on Raspberry Pi

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 05 June 2019 08:32:06 am Frank Swygert wrote:

> Allen Huffman already mentioned this in a post, but I have some
> additional info. For one, go to www.microware.com and read the
> "Microware OS-9 Overview" and the "OS-9 For ARM" tabs. At the bottom
> of the overview you will find "Since February 2013 Microware OS‐9 is
> owned by a part‐nership of three companies, MicroSys,
> Freestation(Japan)and RTSI(USA). They have formed   Microware LP
> (www.microware.com)to actively continue the development on OS‐9."
>
> With the $50 personal OS-9 license for the RPI0W (currently developing
> for more platforms) you can build a complete new system for $150 or
> less (depending on case and peripheral choices) complete with OS-9!!
> Our own Boisy Pitre and Allen Huffman have been consulting with
> Microware, at least informally, so I expect to see a good package come
> out with some input from them and others in the community through
> them. The "CoCo4" could very well be a R-Pi with a CoCo emulator (for
> backward
> compatibility) and native OS-9... maybe with a board enhancement or
> two... OS-9 is also on other ARM board, one that has been mentioned on
> the list is the Beagle Bone. Hopefully this community will settle on
> one of the R-Pi models and "standardize" on it. Would make development
> of add-on boards and software so much easier...

Having lived with a pi3b running 3/4 ton of lathe for about 2 years now, 
I'd object to that. There are other small SBC's that are more suitable.

1. There are other boards that do not suffer from a major s
design flaw the pi's suffer from, the use of an internal usb2 hub for any 
i/o not associated with gpio, or its wifi. EVERYTHING else has to fight 
for a time slot to get its data in and out of the pi by way of this 
internal usb bus. So key up/down events do not always get thru in a 
timely manner, or at all. So once code has made it thru the gauntlet, it 
runs great. The interface card that runs the machine, a mesa 7i90, talks 
to the pi over an SPI bus, using 32 bit packets at a time, writing at 42 
megabaud, and answering back to the pi at 25 megabaud.  That works 
perfectly. So I don't often jog it into position with the keyboard, 
instead by way of a pair of MPJA encoder dials that are handled entirely 
thru the SPI bus. They, and the SPI bus using gpio pins make no 
mistakes. With those, I can jog it .0001" per click

If someone could take the linuxcnc rpspi.ko module, written specifically 
to run only on a pi3b and translate it to run on the rock64, I'd have 
one of those installed by noon my time. With 4GB of dram, the rock64 is 
easily 10 to 20x faster than a pi for $44 + a 4 or 5 amp wall wart 
supply. Add a fan from a dead video card, and the up-times will be from 
power bump to power bump.

My $0.02.
 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
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