Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!unhd!rg
From: rg@uunet!unhd (Roger Gonzalez )
Newsgroups: comp.realtime
Subject: Questions about Mizar, Gespac, and VxWorks
Message-ID: <1990Jul3.130911.11750@uunet!unhd>
Date: 3 Jul 90 13:09:11 GMT
Reply-To: rg@unhd.UUCP (Roger Gonzalez )
Distribution: comp
Organization: Marine Systems Engineering Lab
Lines: 40

Does anyone have experience developing in VxWorks on one of the Mizar/Sun
integrated systems?  I've been reading the glossies that they sent me, and
it looks too good to be true.  I'm mainly interested in the 3U format
cards.

I have some questions, though.  Wind River quotes $80,000 for a source
license, but much less for a "1 year" source license.  What is a 1 year
source license?  What does it prohibit after the 1 year?  Does the code
self-destruct ala Mission Impossible? :-)  We are a non-profit lab
associated with UNH, and I'm hoping that we would get an educational
discount, but even a discounted $80K is too much.

Are there problems with using foreign boards in the Mizar system?  Our
existing system (Ironics P/32 - don't buy one) complains bitterly when
some foreign boards are in the bus.

How difficult is it to get support from Mizar when there is a problem?
Right now, when we call our vendor, there is a lot of finger pointing
between the hardware and software people, and then it usually comes down
to "oh, well if you pay $1200 for this hardware patch, it should fix
the problem."  We want to avoid this.

What are peoples feelings on Gespac?  Is VxWorks available for it, or
are you stuck with OS-9 (as one of my coworkers put so eloquently, the
operating system used in the TRS-80 color computer :-)  I'm a Unix
programmer, so the Mizar solution looked much better to me than having
an OS-9 development environment.

Does anybody know how much of a power pig one of the target Mizar systems
would be?  Our 6U cards suck an amp into the bus terminators alone!  We
will have to drive the thing off batteries, so this is an important issue.

Thanks for your time,
Roger Gonzalez

-- 
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