We've been delivered a copy of the RISC OS 5 HAL, a fundamental operating system component released following Castle's statement on allegations that RISC OS 5 contained GPLed PCI code, used by the Linux operating system. The archive of source is distributed under version 2 of the General Public Licence, which is why we can also re-distribute the source archive for anyone who wants a copy. If you posted Castle a disc and asked for a copy, you were also sent an interesting flyer on future Iyonix motherboard and Oregano prices but we're waiting on an official PR for that. You'll get no teasing from us. Well maybe some."These hardware abstraction layer (aka the 'BIOS') sources correspond to the latest public release from 24th January 2003", explains the note with the sources. "This version is released here under the terms of version 2 of the GNU Public License - a copy of which is included in this archive - for others to make use of when working with the 80321." The 80321 being the Intel Xscale processor used in the Castle Iyonix and the hardware abstraction layer being the HAL.
The source archive contains C code for controlling PCI and USB hardware and numerous low level assembler sources. It's like Castle have wrapped up all the Linux based sources in RISC OS 5 into a little tidy box labeled "HAL" and jettisoned it off under the GPL 2. We'll leave a critical breakdown of the sources until we've had time to go through them and consult other knowledgable people. Either way, Castle have delivered the source as they promised and in our eyes, that's a result. How about a nice Sourceforge.net project called "RISC OS HAL"?
Links
HAL 0.10 source code to RISC OS 5
Castle Technology