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From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.realtime,comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Realtime and UNIX (also, development on Amiga?)
Keywords: unix
Message-ID: <531@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 20 Nov 89 16:48:19 GMT
References: <22175@gryphon.COM> <4537@sugar.hackercorp.com> <788@jc3b21.UUCP> <4679@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <4532@sugar.hackercorp.com> <104@amix.commodore.com>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Followup-To: comp.realtime
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 49

In article <104@amix.commodore.com> ford@amix.commodore.com (Mike "Ford" Ditto) writes:
>If you mean there aren't enough programmers here to implement a
>real-time OS from scratch in this decade, you're probably right.  But
>Commodore has other resources; for example such a system could be
>licensed.

Yes. For instance, Lynx OS (Campbell, CA) looks like it might be a good
candidate.  They rewrote the kernel from scratch to support real time issues,
and it apparently conforms to reasonable Unix standards documents (let's
not get sidetracked into discussing how "standard" such things are) and
claims to run unmodified Unix binaries.

I've felt for years that this is the right way to go; the lack of real
time facilities in (commonly available/standard) Unix's is aggravating in the
extreme even when implementing normal applications. This is usually most
visible to folks who implement games on Unix, or to people who are used
to facilities like that on the Amiga, or even on (gasp!) the IBM PC
(not that it's got "nice" real time facilities, but its sheer primitive
and non-multitasking nature allow people to write real time code).

Disclaimer: all I know about Lynx is what I've read in their own brochures.

>Yes, some system facilities to control the real-time properties of
>processes are necessary.  Unix happens to be known for its ability
>(and tendency) to have new factilies added.  SVr4 has them.

That's great news; I hadn't heard this before. That'll certainly help
us (at Hunter) in creating more responsive applications with less system
overhead. Some of the things we've had to do on Sys V (and even Sun/BSD)
are pretty yucky: "well, it got the job done, but wish there was a better
way!"

Digression:

AmigaDOS, of course, makes most such real time programming problems far
easier to solve. But as has been pointed out numerous times, AmigaDOS has its
own faults. And I'm still trying to figure out how to make my Amiga have as
nice of a programming environment as my Sun. Kind of wierd...in many ways
it has the potential of being better (lack of memory protection aside), but
I dunno...maybe I just haven't gotten the right software together here?

If anyone out there (with solid Sun experience as a point of
comparison) has put together a development environment on their Amy
that they prefer *overall* (not just in little areas), I'd like to hear
about it.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt		{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug
Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow		Professional Wildeyed Visionary