Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: IRQ virus (and a personal note to Steve) Now Masscomp RTU
Message-ID: <3242@sugar.uu.net>
Date: 8 Jan 89 14:22:46 GMT
References: <5601@cbmvax.UUCP> <5602@cbmvax.UUCP> <10788@s.ms.uky.edu> <9050@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX
Lines: 17

In article <9050@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>, mazer@bek-owl.caltech.edu (Jamie Mazer) writes:
> the trick is that an auxiliary bus, with its own 680x0 cpu, called
> the DACP (Data Acq Ctrl Proc), handles the things you consider
> to be time critical, like polling lab devices, starting/stopping
> clocks etc. The DACP is a dedicated data collection CPU and
> must be programmed in assembly.

So, Masscomp does NOT have a "hard-real-time" UNIX. They have a UNIX that's
got enough enhancements for soft real-time, and defer hard real-time to
another processor, running another operating system. Much like DEC does with
their real-time VMS. And much as NeXT does to do really fancy demos.

If you're running UNIX (or other heavy-MMU operating systems) on off-the-shelf
non-proprietary hardware, then, you can't get realtime. Yet, anyway.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva  `-_-'  Hackercorp.
...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net      'U`