greg@ncr-tp.UUCP (Greg Noel) (11/16/84)
Is there a version of Unix that provides minimal functionality? We would like to hook an existing driver to an existing application program and get it to run on a special-purpose board. Essentially, we would like to use just enough Unix-glue so that the driver has the functions it expects, and the application sees enough of the "system calls" so that it is happy, and eliminate the portion of Unix that would be unneeded. (Unneeded would be disk I/O (no disk), multiprogramming (only one process), pipes (only one process), time of day (but might need interval timing), tty I/O (no terminals) -- in fact, almost everything except access to the specific driver.) Some of the management here have heard of a system called something like "C Executive" that may be what we want. Does anybody know who/what/where this is? Is this a possibility? The traditional offer is made: Please mail me the information and if there is sufficient interest, I will post a summary. Tks. (For UUCP people: ncr-tp is a new site, reachable via sdcsvax. It will be formally announced soon.) -- -- Greg Noel, NCR Torrey Pines Greg@ncr-tp.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (11/18/84)
> Is there a version of Unix that provides minimal functionality? We would > like to hook an existing driver to an existing application program and get > it to run on a special-purpose board. Essentially, we would like to use > just enough Unix-glue so that the driver has the functions it expects, and > the application sees enough of the "system calls" so that it is happy, > and eliminate the portion of Unix that would be unneeded. AT&T UNIXes come with a "stand-alone" system that is used to build versions of dd, cat, etc. for use under the "stand-alone shell". The "scc" utility compiles for this environment, using run-time support from lib2.a. This looks like it might be close to what you want.
dan@rna.UUCP (11/20/84)
xyzzy You didn't say how much UNIX-glue you needed and on what processor... The C Executive is a ROM minimal OS which provides multi-tasking, simple IPC and other support for C programs running standalone on many common microprocessors. The C Executive is a product of JMI. Another product of the same class is Hunter and Ready's VRTX. I believe that VRTX has a bit more functionality than the C Executive and has an optional I/O module. It is not cheap. (415)-326-2950. BRL is developing a simple standalone message-passing OS which currently runs on PDP-11's I don't believe any of the above actually look like UNIX to any degree, though certain equivalences could be made. Bell had a number of similar packages which did UNIX system call compatibility. I don't think they are generally available. For PDP-11's, I wrote a simple OS environment which does provide many of the non-I/O UNIX system calls (including a version of fork()). It is written in structured assembler and is C compatible. It is possible to take a UNIX C program and compile it with this package and run that UNIX program standalone just as the same C source runs on UNIX. Cheers, Dan Ts'o Dept. Neurobiology Rockefeller Univ. 1230 York Ave. NY, NY 10021 212-570-7671 ...cmcl2!rna!dan