mwnorman@bcarh332.bnr.ca (Michael Norman) (02/02/90)
I used QNX for about 2 years and found it to be great, with only a few caveats: If you wish to use QNX and QNX-oriented services only (THEIR network, THEIR software, etc) the system is great. But getting connected or inter-working in some sense of the word with the DOS or UNIX world is a little more tricky. I do understand that the upcoming POSIX-compliant version of QNX should help considerably with this. The kernel is small (relative to *NIX) and fast (and getting faster all the time, too!) Quantum's response is great: on-line BBS, technical hotline in which you actually get to talk to a technical person!! (Usual scenario: ... Hi! I've got a problem with (something_or_other) O.K. I'll just pop-up the source-code and see how we did it. Yup, you're right, you have to set the phibert-flange before using the grappel-grommet...etc. I was part of a team that ported an application from a network of 5 AT's running QNX to a Sun-4 (adding a Graphical User Interface! Another minor weakness to QNX. Of course, some one COULD port X if they had the time!!) About 10K lines of code was moved from one system to the other in about 4 months (another 2 for tidying-up, documenting (yes! we DO document things!!!). During the port, difficulties were limited to the conceptual differences of the underlying OSs: QNX: lots of little tasks, quickly spawned and then killed. UNIX: a few relatively large tasks that live (hopefully) forever. I just quickly browsed through the CI86 Compiler manual: they claim to generate code for the 80386 (-G3 compiler switch). Code models: every one excepts HUMUNGOUS (my name) in which any single data-object can be any size. In the UNLIMITED (HUGE) no one data object can be larger than 64K (less a few bytes for overhead), but you can have as many of these beasties as you wish (Now I can get Little Smalltalk to compile!!!). Caio, Mike Norman, c/o Bell-Northern Research .... uunet!bnrgate!bcarh332!mwnorman P.O. Box 3511 Station 'C' Ottawa, Ontario Canada Cute Saying: "Wherever you go, there K1Y 4H7 (613) 763-7717 you are!" - Buckaroo Bonzai Mike Norman, c/o Bell-Northern Research .... uunet!bnrgate!bcarh332!mwnorman P.O. Box 3511 Station 'C' Ottawa, Ontario Canada Cute Saying: "Wherever you go, there