Re: Increased Interest In Ada?

[Rush Kester <Rush.Kester@jhuapl.edu>]

There are two Ada interfaces to the Lego Mindstorms robotics kit already
available.
One is Ada to NQC developed by Barry Fagin at the US Air Force Academy,
see http://www.usafa.af.mil/dfcs/adamindstorms.htm  The other is a binding
Lego's
SPIRIT.OCX active X control developed by David Botton, see
 http://www.adapower.com/gnatcom/mindstorm.zip

Rush Kester
Software Systems Engineer

Hans-Olof Danielsson wrote:

> Another option is the Lego Mindstorm robotics kit.
>
> The robotics contains a Hitachi H8 microcontroller which is supported by the
> latest GCC version. Recently there was a posting on the *crossgcc* list
> regarding building a C cross compiler for H8 with GNU/Linux as host , so
> there is at least a GCC-based C cross compilor.
>
> When GNAT moves to GCC common source tree ( according to earlier posting on
> this cla-list, that is planed for GCC 3.1 ) it shouldn�t be to difficult to
> build a GNAT cross compiler for H8. It might be equaly easy ( or difficult )
> with GCC 2.81 ( if it supports H8 ) used for GNAT 3.13p.
>
> The next step would then be to build a binding to the robotic ROM image,
> making it possible to control the robot from Ada.
>
> HOD
>
> Hans-Olof Danielsson, Danitek AB, Dragspelsv. 20, S-732 32 Arboga, Sweden
> Tel: int +46 589 140 38, Email: Hans-Olof.Danielsson@swipnet.se
> Web: www.node98.com/danitek, Member of Node98  www.node98.com
>
> "Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm taking a look at the PC/104 card info from: http://www.pc104.org/ It
> > looks interesting, but as far as I can tell, you'd probably have some
> > retargeting issues for GNAT no matter what you did. And of course,
> embedded
> > programming is more than finding GNAT and RTEMS for some target hardware -
> > you really need a lot of additional software for it to be useful. From the
> > hardware side, you'd need to have some basic electrical things like A/Ds,
> > D/As, (F/Ds, maybe?) discretes & ports that would be useful for student
> > projects and representative of real-world development.
> >
> > I'm going to examine the PC/104 thing a bit more thoroughly. If you think
> of
> > any other possibilities for an SBC to which GNAT might target with minimal
> > fuss, let me know... Thanks.
> >
> > MDC
> > --
> > Marin David Condic
> > Senior Software Engineer
> > Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
> > Enabling the digital revolution
> > e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
> > Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/
> >
> >
> >
> > "Tarjei T. Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.com> wrote in message
> > news:972uon$729@news.kvaerner.com...
> > > It is clearly commercial possibilities if you can find a decent and
> cheap
> > > PC/104 card or a PC motherboard/bios to work with. Then it should be a
> > matter
> > > of documenting how to use gnat and/or RTEMS to get results. You may have
> > to
> > > write a few drivers for the network card or graphics card.
> > >
> > > You would have a great teaching tool and a easy kit to commercialize.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > comp.lang.ada mailing list
> > comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
> > http://ada.eu.org/mailman/listinfo/comp.lang.ada

--

Rush Kester
Software Systems Engineer
AdaSoft at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
email:  rush.kester@jhuapl.edu
phone: (240) 228-3030 (live M-F 9:30am-4:30pm, voicemail anytime)
fax:      (240) 228-6779
http://hometown.aol.com/rwkester/myhomepage/index.html