[Debian-lego-team] BrickOS-Bibo Project Updates

[Matthew Sheets]

Hello Nicolas,

> Question - Playing System Sounds from BrickOS:
> Might anyone here know if the ROM sound_system call depends on the
> "init_timer" ROM call having been called previously?

I came across some additional context:
“The ROM can be completely overridden, if you like
      Just don't call init_timer and the H8 is all yours”
 - https://www.mralligator.com/rcx/#Rom

The leJOS firmware, which has APIs for the LEGO system sounds, does call ROM's init_timer:
 - https://github.com/BrickBot/leJOS-RCX/blob/master/src/platform/rcx/main.c#L239

The brickOS firmware does _not_ (init_timer must be called before init_power / power_init, per librcx info):
 - https://github.com/BrickBot/brickOS-bibo/blob/master/kernel/kmain.c#L116

Depending on the exact nature of a possible timer dependency, it perhaps then might not be possible to use the LEGO systems sounds if maintaining the greater control that brickOS offers….


> I do not know what to do for the Homepage, for the moment it still
> points to the sourceforge site, but this does not mention the version 4
> release obviously.

> This is still the one refered to in the README and readme ;-), manual
> page and on the "About" section on github. Do you have plans about this?

That homepage situation for NQC is largely the same across the project repositories in the BrickBot GitHub organization, in that the provided website links for project info is to either the original project website (if it still exists) or an archived version from archive.org (if available).  This is primarily because while I have at least attempted to ensure at least the source code is archived, more informational content such as project descriptions, overviews, getting started guides, documentation, frequently asked questions, etc. have not yet been converted for Markdown-style viewing, wiki pages, or GitHub Pages, etc.

In the case of NQC, the BrickBot/nqc project is essentially based on what had been the source code tree for NQC, while the BrickBot/nqc-libs project includes content such as NQC libraries, tutorials, guides, examples, etc. that were specific to NQC but were not a part of the original source tarballs.  Other content, though, like the Frequently Asked Questions page, is I think still only on the original NQC project website.  Long term, it would probably be nice to have all the NQC content in one place (with the NQC libraries perhaps even being bundled and installed with NQC itself), but I am open to suggestions or contributions.  :-)


Thank you,
Matthew