VxWorks on PC?
Dirk Vangestel
I'm posting this for a collegue:
I'm looking for info from people who have experience
with VxWorks on PC-based machines.
Available drivers for HD/network-cards/...?
Stability?
I would also appreciate some general info on VxWorks, like
architecture, features, tools (X-development), etc. for PC's.
For our product we are currently using pSOS ...
Thanx
Raf Kiggen
Alcatel Telecom
Postal Automation Division
E-mail: R.Ki...@stgl.sel.alcatel.de
Bob Tadlock
Ive been using vxWorks 5.1.1 on several PC's (486 & Pentium) and
had great results. Ive also made several enhancements to the x86
vxWorks code so I can boot from a floppy or harddrive and read the
startup parameters from a file at boot time so I dont have to recompile
the kernel for different setups. Ive also modified the boot code so I can
detect several different ethernet cards and load and config the correct
network config at boot time, this is a plus so I dont have to recompile
the kernel for different network setups.
--
Bob Tadlock
b...@tadlock.com
http://www.tadlock.com
Dirk Vangestel <ges...@se.bel.alcatel.be> wrote in article
<32D585...@se.bel.alcatel.be>...
Wes Peters
Dirk Vangestel wrote:
> I'm looking for info from people who have experience
> with VxWorks on PC-based machines.
> Available drivers for HD/network-cards/...?
> Stability?
I am using VxWorks 5.3 with 'pc486' board support package (BSP) for a
new
development project. I've previously worked with VxWorks 5.1 and 5.2
on M68K architectures.
The driver selection is pretty good. In particular, standard PC floppy
and IDE hard disks are supported, as well as a number of common network
cards. The only supported SCSI interface is an older NCR chip, but SCSI
isn't that popular with the PC crowd and IDE drives are easier to find.
All in all, I've had a pretty good experience with VxWorks on a PC
platform
so far. The system is pretty sensitive to small changes in BSP
settings,
but that is just the nature of the beast. The programming model for
VxWorks is pretty comfortable for me, being an old UNIX hacker.
> I would also appreciate some general info on VxWorks, like
> architecture, features, tools (X-development), etc. for PC's.
> For our product we are currently using pSOS ...
The cross-development tools are slightly customized version of the
GNU toolset. The set that Wind River distributes is pretty out of
date, however if you're familiar with GNU tools, building an up to
date set is straightforward. For the 486 processor in particular,
the latest version of GCC, 2.7.2.1, has some fixes to optimization
that are nice, and a few new C++ features are supported. Plus, the
code generated is generally slightly smaller than the 2.6.1 compiler
supplied by Wind River. If you upgrade the compiler, you will also
need to update GDB and the binutils.
Dayna chose WinNT as their development platform, along with the new
Tornado tools. I don't like WinNT and find the UNIX environment much
more to my liking. I have fixed most of the problems with NT by
obtaining a full set of GNU tools for NT, including Emacs. ;^)
Tornado on Windows NT lacks a lot. I can't seem to find much coherency
in the toolset. There are features in VxWorks that apparently can't use
with Tornado as well. The module loader, for instance, requires a
local symbol table in the target system, but the Tornado shell uses
a symbol table on the host. Blechh! Plus, Tornado on NT doesn't seem
to be particularly stable, it seems to just stop fairly frequently.
I haven't used Tornado on UNIX, but here it is more stable. I miss
my Sun and HP systems *very* much. ;^)
Good luck.
--
It was a diamond as big as
the Ritz
Wes Peters What you gonna do with this,
tell me
Sr. Software Engineer Who's gonna save you when you're a
slave to
Dayna Communications A diamond as big as
the Ritz