Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rpi!think.com!paperboy!hsdndev!husc6!genrad!genrad.com!mas From: mas@genrad.com (Mark A. Swanson) Newsgroups: comp.realtime Subject: Re: RSX -- one of the best? Summary: Lack of connectivity & address space limit RSX Message-ID: <41618@genrad.UUCP> Date: 23 May 91 15:39:18 GMT References: <22847@shlump.lkg.dec.com> Sender: news@genrad.UUCP Distribution: comp.realtime Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass. Lines: 14 Yes, RSX is a nice operating system for problems it can handle, which are a constantly declining part of those in our problem space. The old problem with it is the PDP-11's limited address space. I have spent far too many weeks cramming "10 pounds into a 5 pound bag" to voluntarily use it again for any of the problems I deal with. (Most involve some computation tasks which needs to run on the same CPU as the real time application. 64kbytes does not cut it. The need for such computation tasks explains why RSX rather than a simple real time kernel got used.) However, the killers for our use was the fact that RSX had no support for TCP/IP (and for quite a while little for Ethernet), and poor C compilers which made it difficult to work with in the context of larger systems. Mark Swanson