ARM netbook port..

http://www.osnews.com/story/21031/ARM_Shows_Prototype_Netbooks

Next stop recover the ‘Acorn Computers’ trademark… <grin>

Could their be a 32 bit HAL for these? Current software install is currently based on Ubuntu according to the article.. 250USD For a RISC OS Netbook is something :)

At least one is the freescale i.mx515 based prototype. There is some more information linked from Jeffrey’s porting page. https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/pages/Cortex-A8+port

Freescale and ARM have to convince a manufacturer/distributer that people will buy a linux based netbook when Atom systems running XP are allready for sale.

I have my fingers crossed of course.

All of these are cortex. One is a cortex core. the other is a cpu with cortex instruction set.

How about a XScale netbook NPX-9000? it has 416 MHz XScale, 800×480 LCD and 64 MB memory. just got one one in my mail..

If anyone wants to see RISC OS running on any new hardware then the best way of assuring that at the moment is for them to grab the source code and start porting it themselves.

There are loads of devices being revealed at Computex at the moment based around OMAP/Freescale/Snapdragon/Tegra chips which could run RISC OS, as well as loads of older existing kit like Zaurus PDAs or Jandoras or NPX-9000’s or whatever. The only thing stopping RISC OS running on most them (apart from any potential lack of hardware docs) is that there aren’t enough programmers around who are interested enough to actually do something about it.

Hi Jeffrey,

i have ported Linux to several platforms including PDA’s. It appears that the threshold for porting linux is much lower due to open development environments. Currently there is no way to cross compile RISC OS. Therefore all ‘fast’ PC’s are useless for building RISC OS. My old Risc PC is not (yet) up to the task.. I surely hope i will be able to help out with coding in the near future.

Jan Rinze.

Currently there is no way to cross compile RISC OS. Therefore all ‘fast’ PC’s are useless for building RISC OS.

Not necessarily true. If you’ve got lots of experience with Linux then I’m sure Peter Naulls wouldn’t mind an extra pair of hands to help with his project of cross-compiling RISC OS using GCCSDK.

That is exactly what I mean.. If you want something create it yourself. But there is no crosscompile environment. So yes in theory you can go and figure out how to convert and build RiscOS under GCC but apparently the only project doing this has focused on the GCCSDK for RiscOS. So that rules out the ‘fast PC’ once more..

Sorry, I’m not at all sure of what you’re trying to say here. Please also, it’s “RISC OS”.

but apparently the only project doing this has focused on the GCCSDK for RiscOS. So that rules out the ‘fast PC’ once more..

I think you’re confused. GCCSDK is a cross-compilation environment for RISC OS. It is not the native RISC OS GCC. Note, however, that the native RISC OS GCC is built from the same source tree.

While it is certainly possible to cross-compile a number of RISC OS components, there’s a fairly large amount of work still to do before it will be possible to cross-compile an entire ROM image.

Peter, I am sorry if I am stepping on anyones toes. My point is that in order to participate in porting there is much more to it than just grabbing the sources. Sorry if i have been unclear about that. I will leave it there as is.

Peter, I am sorry if I am stepping on anyones toes

That is certainly not the case. But there does seem to be a great deal of confusion here. It’s in everyone’s interests that this be cleared up, which I think JMB has done.

My point is that in order to participate in porting there is much more to it than just grabbing the sources

Of course, did you expect otherwise? In the Linux world, this ground work was laid more than 10 years ago, so all the cross building infrastructure exists – plus often you’re building on a Linux environment already, which simplifies some things. However, it’s not entirely clear what your expectations are from GCC - your statement was made as if you had an alternative in mind.

Right now, I have built everything in Apps that relies on RISC_OSLib, and am currently trying to build Toolbox, so I can build the rest of that apps. Concurrently, I’m working out how the build system will tie together. so it actually all makes sense and is easy.

I have 2 different XScale devices here, both of them run Linux and so there is sufficient info on their hardware to be able to build a HAL for each. I will be studying how to build a ROM and try that on RPCemu. If that works i can take a look at the RISC OS source code and learn what the HAL does. For each XScale platform I will be trying to write the HAL and see how far that will get me.

regards,

Jan Rinze.

Great stuff, go for it!

As for cross-compiling RiscOS, have you tried WinARM ?

It’s “RISC OS”. But pointing to ARM toolchains that people have knocked up (generally for ARM Linux) misses the point. The compiler and toolchain need to understand many RISC OS specifics, which reduces the choice to only 2 compilers in practice – Norcroft and the RISC OS GCC port. And for cross compiling, the latter is the only available choice for almost all people.

Anyway, actually being able to produce appropriate RISC OS ARM code is only a small part of the problem. If you’d read anything about the topic in these forums, you’d understand that cross compiling requires an appropriate build infrastructure, so the right bits can be thrown at the compiler/assembler/other tools in the right way.