Mac hardware to write Codename One native interfaces - codenameone

I need a Mac to write a native Codename One interface for iOS. I would like to use it in the future for the same purpose. I need to be able to open with Xcode the native code generated by the build server, add the implementation in Objective-C of the native methods and test the code on my iPhone X, to connect to the Mac via usb.
I found the following refurbished computer, I would like to ask you a secure confirmation that it goes well for the above purposes, before buying it:
Model MacBook Pro 13″ (MacBookPro9,2) - A1278 - MD101LL/A - 2012
Intel Core i5 3210M "Ivy Bridge" 2.5GHz "Ivy Bridge" processor with turbo boost up to 3.1GHz
Installed Ram 8 GB PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM
Intel HD Graphics 4000 integrated video card - 1.5GB of shared video memory
Installed Hard Disk Drive 500GB SATA 2.5″ HDD
13.3 inch (diagonal) LED backlit display - 1280×800 pixels
Operating System macOS 10.15 Catalina
Keyboard Layout QWERTY US - International
2x USB 3.0, 2x Thunderbolt, 1x SD-card slot, 1x Jack 3.5″ Devices

Right now seems OK, my one serious concern is the SATA disk and not SSD. Up until recently I used the 2013 version with 16gb, SSD and i7 which is still a great machine (screen broke in a fall on hard tile floor).
I can't tell if it will work well in the future but for now the important line is:
Operating System macOS 10.15 Catalina
That's the latest. So it will be able to run the latest xcode which should be compatible for Codename One development for a while.
Since this is an 8 year old machine and Apple is transitioning to ARM devices don't expect more than 2 years from this machine though.
Another option you can consider is a Mac mini. They are often an amazing value for the money, even when new.

Related

Need C compiler for Windows 7 64-bit, to compile to DOS target

I'm trying to find a solution to allow me to compile C code to a DOS executable from Windows 7 64-bit. I recently updated from XP 32-bit to Win7 64-bit, and now my Borland C++ 5.0 compiler won't work. I get an error when it tries to call tlink.exe 16-bit. I'm trying to avoid bringing over another computer with XP but that will have to be my course of action if I can't figure something else out soon.
My target is an embedded x86 running FreeDOS. As much as I'd like to transition to Linux I can't afford the time that would transition would take. Aside from the learning curve of never having used Linux, much of my code is DOS-dependent and would have to be re-written.
I'm hoping there's a windows setting I can just change but my research so far leads me to believe I need a more drastic change to my process. I've sniffed around at Turbo C 2.01, DJGPP, DOSbox... not really too confident to go down any of those alleys without some outside input
Run Virtual XP or VirtualBox and install Borland C++ inside. BTW, there is version 5.02 with some fixes (in case your version is exactly 5.0).
If you can find an old Microsoft Compiler, like 16 bit C / C++ 1.52 (which is included on the 32 bit C / C++ 4.1 cd-rom), or C 8.00 or earlier, it runs using a dos extender or in a 32 bit dos console window.
Why can't you run the Borland compiler using FreeDOS?
You could try to create a virtual machine with MSDOS on it, but you'd have to find a way to install MSDOS 6.22 on the virtual machine. At Microsoft's support site, they have links to a bootable ISO file for MSDOS 6.22. I still have the original floppies and started with those on an old system that has a floppy drive. It's a bit awkward to import / export files to / from the virtual machine.
This is the config.sys that I use that seems to work with Win 7 virtual machine. I had to increase buffers, stacks, and files to avoid a stack overflow problem with this setup.
dos=high,umb
buffers=40,0
files=60
lastdrive=e
shell=c:\command.com c:\ /e:1024 /p
stacks=64,512
switches=/f
device=c:\dos\himem.sys /numhandles:64 /testmem:off
device:c:\dos\emm683.exe ram i=b100-b7ff i=c600-c7ff i=cc00-cfff i=e600-efff frame=d000 a=32 d=128 notr
devicehigh=c:vmadd\cdrom.sys /d:mscd001
This is the autoexec.bat that I use (smartdrv is a bit pointless in this case so I commented it out with "rem" prefix) .
c:\dos\emm386 auto
lh c:\dos\mscdex.exe /d:mscd001 /m:7
rem lh c:\dos\smartdrv.exe
lh c:\vmadd\mouse.com
set path=c:\dos
set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p330 t6
prompt $p$g
As for a compiler, Open Watcom seems to me to be the best choice in your situation. FrameworkPascal (written in the old version of Watcom) provides a 32 bit extender. Regarding the creation of a FreeDOS virtual machines, pickup the tools from Microsoft SysInteral. They include a tool that create a VHD. Once you get a FreeDOS running in a VM you can simply SYS the VHD and start it anywhere. There are plenty ready to run ISO images for FreeDOS, one worth mentioning is Seagate Seatools for DOS which is being distributed with the FreeDOS kernel.
Your best (but not only) solution for running all that is probably XPMode on Windows 7 Pro. It runs Windows XP 32 which of course provide 100 percent transparent compatibility via its NTVDM with DOS 16 bit real mode, 16 bits protected (Windows 3.1), and DOS 32 bit extenders.
NTVDM by the way is a feature that can be activated on Windows 10 Pro but it yet to be seen what exactly can be done with it there.
XPMode is a free downnload from Microsoft that installs a free version of Windows XP 32 bit in a virtual machine on Windows 7 Pro with full sharing of the cutpaste/copy buffer, USB, drives, screen and network card (web access). It can be toggled between a Window and full screen. The installation of XPMode is automated (after activation of the Windows 7 Pro VM). Microsoft provide various downloadable hot fixes that update the registry to activate the VM. There is an MS support downloadable hot fix that has to be run to allow the installation on the AMD Bulldozer architecture. XPMode hibernate its desktop and virtual hard drives making it a much more productive environment than a hardware based system.
With a little extra work Windows XP 32 bits can be installed on any virtual machine including Microsoft Virtual Machine on Windows XP 64 bits as well as Oracle Box and VMWare. XPMode however is probably the smoothest solution since some installations such as MS Virtual Machine for Windows XP 64 bits do not utilized the full physical display in full screen (only about 90 percent of it). If you install your browser and email in XPMode you can live in the full screen and forget about new versions of Windows.

RTLinux on X86 PC

Preface:
Linux and RT is a new realm of discovery, as I am mostly familiar with the Windows environment & Visual Studio C++ development.
Goal:
Execute a few sample 'C' programs on RTLinux, for analysis of deadlines and timing.
Method:
I do not currently have a "target" hardware device. However, I do have a PC with an Intel Core i5.
Questions:
Can I install in a dual boot configuration to preserve my every day
Windows 7 configuration? Will it work with Ubuntu? This is my biggest concern unless I purchase another PC.
Can RTLinux install and execute correctly? I do see it supports x86
but has this been done successfully on a PC configuration - and does it have a GUI to work with?
Are there are reliable simulators that can run on Windows, bypassing installing the OS, that will give good benchmarks of
timing, say of a context switch?
Any other options to run sample programs on RTLinux that I may not be
aware of ?
You can install Ubuntu on a PC with Windows 7 but you will need a separate disk partition and things can go wrong. I have different versions of Ubuntu and other Linux 32 bit and 64 bit distros installed on USB sticks, USB disks and an eSATA disk. The USB devices, at least for Ubuntu, all boot successfully on my desktops and laptops. Booting time and details of my Linux programs are in the following. All are compiled and run from command lines, where commands are provided with the source codes that are free to download.
http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/linux%20benchmarks.htm
The distros are copied to bootable USB sticks or CDs/DVDs. At least older releases of Ubuntu were easily installed on USB devices or on an hard disk partition but bootable from USB. For later ones, I installed the distros on a laptop, with the disk drive disconnected. Then you can’t go wrong.
I believe that RTLinux uses the same GCC compiler as other Linuxes.

how to run an ARM application on device?

I have compiled a simple executable application written in C, using the arm-linux-gnueabi compiler for ARM.
How to run it on device?
Assuming that I have two devices for test it:
A Samsung phone with Windows Mobile 6.1, ARM926EJ OMAP1710 processor
A Foston tablet with Android 2.x, the processor name I not found but is one of processors in the ARM family.
If is not possible run it on the current operating system, then how to format the device and put my kernel instead of Android/Linux?
An application is typically built to run on top of an operating system. An operating system is typically built to run on top of hardware. Keep this in mind.
Running your application instead of Android/Linux implies that your application is a operating system of some sort. If you didn't write or include explicit code to control the hardware chips in the device, then you are only asking the wrong question, you should ask "I've wrtten an application in C, now how do I run it on my phone's operating system." If you did write or include explicit code to control the hardware chips in the device, then you did ask the right question (but some of the details seem off). This style of development happens a lot with the arduino/PIC/embedded ARM community.
Assuming you are not doing embedded development, the application must be compiled with some understanding of what the operating system offers (against the operating system's available api's) which generally makes them incompatible with other operating systems. This means the first step is to determine what operating system you are targeting, and obtain it's development suite. Once you have that, assuming that it supports C code (as most do), the suite will recompile your source code in a format that is both compatible with the CPU of the device and the API of the operating system on the device.
Small devices like phones typically run operating systems that have a tiny fraction of the features of a PC, so be prepared for fewer convenience features, and possibly "missing" libraries. That said, if you do get it to compile, typically you then hook the device up with the supported "bus" (USB is very popular), and save the program on the device (which sometimes involves sending "development / debugging" codes across the bus, and the development suite does this for you).
If everything worked well, you can then launch your program from the phone. If the program misbehaves and renders the phone inoperable, each development suite / phone has specific instructions on how to recover or reload a fresh operating system.
Here are resources for a few well known platforms (and percentages of the phones using them)
(worldwide according to Gartner's latest study, US according to Nielsen's latest study)
As referenced from wikipedia on 4/27/2012
(52%, 46.3%) Android Standard Development Kit
(16.9%, 1.4%) Symbian Standard Development Kit
(15%, 30%) iOS Phone Standard Development Kit
(11%, 14.9%) Blackberry Phone Standard Development Kit
(2.2%, 0%) Bada Standard Development Kit
(1.5%, 5.9%) Windows Phone Standard Development Kit
Note that these measurements are like most surveys, while they attempt to be random and unbiased, they are prone to measurement error and sampling error, so the numbers are more useful as relative indicators than absolute values.

OpenCV on ARM11 architecture with Ubuntu Support

I am developing a project based on OpenCV. Currently I am working on Ubuntu 10.04 system with AMD turion processor. But project need to work as an embedded system. So I am using a readymade board based on ARM11 processor with SAMSUNG S3C6410 processor. It supprot Linux 2.6.28. It also support ubuntu. So how could I port my code from the host system to my embedded system.
Thanks
This is link for the board.
http://www.minidevs.com/
I think the best way to start, is to take a look at Angstrom/OpenEmbedded.
It's a framework for building OS images for various embedded platforms. You could take the precompiled-images, but I've realized that after a while it's not worth the hassle.
Just build the target image yourself (with OpenCV for the target platform, it definitely builds for S3C2440 (tested it myself a year ago or so) and for all OMAP3 platforms (BeagleBoard, EVM and the like).
Then, use OpenEmbedded to build the cross-compiler (there is a package name for that), install it on your host machine, and you should be ready to go.
If there is no support for S3C6410, just use any other ARM11 platform out there, and install the packages. It is likely your vendor-supplied OS was built using OpenEmbedded, it quickly becomes de-facto standard.
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/
http://www.openembedded.org
Check Linaro if the processor you are looking for is ARM. It looks promising. http://www.linaro.org/

how to make winxp ms-dos virtual machine work like win98 ms-dos especially graphics

Initially...
I started programming in C. that was was 10 years back(college). The IDE i used was Turbo C++ IDE.
All my c programs were 16bit.
Memory Model : Huge.
Graphics : 4bit (16 colors).
Graphics Driver: EGAVGA.BGI
Resolution: 640x480.
OS: MS-DOS 6.0 (under windows98 it is 7.0 - which always gave an accelerated execution of code)
Sample programs were [my computer like win3.1 still have some pending work], [paint brush - 16 colors], [graphics mouse pointer generator], 16 bit font generator... and so on..
(these i have not yet published anywhere).
It is huge(memory model) because i extensively used C Graphics Library of Borland Turbo C.
Here is my request...
I wanted to document my work. Just in leisure time. and to just rewind the old concepts
and to implement the same in win32 api.
I like the way i wrote the codes and i really enjoyed seeing the outout as expected but still wanting more for which i never gave up but it got outdated and i am with win32api.
The emulation of win98 16bit graphics was perfect. BUT in windows xp the virtual machine output was totally different and the graphics was shabby when i run my graphics programs(GUI).
Because of this i could not take a print screen of a module.
One alternative i have is to use a win98 machine... run my programs and then can do the print screen.
What i thought was there should be an option to emulate the real 16 bit environment in windows xp like in windows98. So i am here to get some suggestions. Thank you.
Have you tried DOSBox? It's something people use to emulate an old DOS environment for games. Try it out.
DOSBox comes with the emulated hardware most games and graphical applications from that era need (VESA VGA modes, Soundblaster/Adlib sound...)
Also, see the comparison of platform virtual machines on Wikipedia
For running MS-DOS applications you may use DOS-Box. It runs even on Windows Vista and 7.

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