melnik@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ofer Melnik) (12/07/90)
HI, I am interested in real-time OS's for PC's. The only one I know anything about is VRTX. Basically it has almost everything I need; Multi-tasking, intertask communication, reentrant DOS, a few device drivers, a run- time lib for C (reentrant), a limited debugger...etc.. This is the info I got from their written material (ready systems).. what would really be useful is hands-on experience from people who have written applications using VRTX and other OS's. What are the real advantages/ disadvantages of using a particular OS.. This is a small list of points.. 1) How is multi-tasking handled ? Fixed task-switch time ? What events does the OS support?? 2) How good are the drivers..and how difficult is it to add a new driver? Is it possible to port a dos driver ? 3) How cumbersome is it to write high-level code for the os?? do you have to link in massive quantities of libs and objs to your code ? How much K does it add to the executable ? And how intuitive are the programming commands ? 4) How difficult is it to debug the system ? In terms of the debugger and various idiosyncrasies of the OS.. 5) How does it handle multiple task keyboard input / screen output? and multiple task disk access ? 6) Does it create a separate executable which can be run over DOS ? or does it mandate preloading the OS ? 7) Is it an OS specifically designed for the PC..or is it a derivative work like VRTX ? How is this apparent ? Now what specific problems did you encounter ??? I am most interested in applications which have alot of serial communication in the background.. Thanx, -OM