raja@osc.edu (Raja Daoud) (06/18/91)
Ohio PC Trollius 2.1 is now in release. An adaptation of Ohio Trollius 2.1 for transputers hosted by MS DOS personal computers has been completed at OSU. For brevity, I will use its nickname, PC-T. PC-T is identical to Unix Trollius on the transputers (ITB nodes). Each transputer runs the usual multitasking Trollius kernel and system processes. These servers support features like dynamic process management, arbitrary message passing, process status, Unix-like signals, tunable message buffering, routing, multicasting, multi-weight threads, remote node process spawning, etc. Again, this is not different from Unix hosted transputers. PC-T is a single tasking solution of Trollius for the single tasking operating system, DOS. The goal is to give DOS users an opportunity to use Trollius. With single tasking, Trollius user programs cannot be run concurrently on the PC. This is the only restriction over Unix Trollius. I believe this approach is taken by some other software systems for transputers and DOS. Again, we are only talking here about the host node, the PC, the thing that runs DOS. The ITB nodes (transputers) run full blown multitasking Trollius natively. PC-T does not make a Trollius OTB node out of the PC. There is no kernel, no datalink processes, no other system processes, only the single Trollius service program, called tserver. Tserver handles a) filed requests, b) loadd requests and c) commands. All Trollius commands are fully supported. Tserver represents less than 1000 lines of documented C code beyond existing Trollius code for Unix. PC-T fully supports the process schema (conf) grammar for configuring the ITB node operating system as well as the NaIL grammar for configuring the topology of the ITB nodes. Any number of nodes, with any identification scheme, in any topology are supported. PC-T is booted exactly like Unix Trollius, with the spread command. Other topology tools like map and solder are unchanged. You prepare (or grab) a boot schema describing the machine you want, make sure a route file exists (if not, use map), configure the nodes, if necessary, with solder, then type spread. This is exactly like Unix hosted Trollius. PC-T has a very simple command line shell. It supports all the Trollius commands, a help menu and an escape for DOS commands. It is quite easy to extend. You can stop and start tserver while Trollius continues to run on the transputers. PC-T is available with the complete sources. PC-T requires the Logical Systems Transputer Toolset as a companion product. PC-T is developed with Microsoft C. Compatibility with Turbo-C probably only requires a few string substitutions. PC-T will be licensed similar to Unix Trollius. The 2.1 version will carry the same license fee, $300 US, as regular Ohio Trollius. Distribution will be either via ftp (preferred) or 5 1/4 inch floppy diskettes. Development of PC-T was partially supported by Inmos, with a donation of four T800-17s. We used the Inmos/LS/CSA educational kit and generally had a very good experience. Raja Daoud -- Raja Daoud raja@tbag.osc.edu Trollius Operating System (614) 292-4123 Ohio Supercomputer Center Trollius Factory Outlet The Ohio State University 3.0: The Big Picture