Re: EPICs on PC

[Kay-Uwe Kasemir <Kay-Uwe.Kasemir@Physik.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE>]

Mr. Mancini, hello tech-talk:

Derrick C. Mancini (mancini@aps.anl.gov) sent me this question
which might be of general interest.
If not please ignore it...

>I am thinking about implementing IOC on a PC box with need to also support
a new
>ISA card.
>
>Your method describes doing so using Windows Tornado.  Is there any reason why
>you couldn't use the Solaris based VxWorks development system if you purchased
>the x86 target tools and license?

I don't know anyone who has tried that but it should not pose any problem.
On any platform you should be able to compile EPICS/base just by
        launching a shell
        "cd <EPICS base>"
        "gnumake"
as soon as you have
* Tornado for the host/target combination that you need,
* GNUmake and a simple UNIX-style shell available.
Note that even on the PC a simple UNIX-style shell is
still necessary. On UNIX it's already there, of course.

Our motivation was to do it all on the PC because
* PCs are much cheaper than UNIX workstations,
* Windriver was soon selling more than 50% of its host licenses
  for PC as soon as PC-Tornado came out,
  so EPICS should be able to use it.
But we didn't break the build on workstations,
it's still an option  :-)

>Also, when developing, you do so with two machines.
Yes, as usual with EPICS developement:
You used to have a UNIX host and a VME IOC,
now you can also use a PC host and a PC IOC.

>But is there anything to prevent one from actually using the same machine
for host
>developer and target, by say using the reboot choice option, so that you
would >compile
>under Windows, but the binary into correct location, reboot under VxWorks
and run?
That sure can be done (in fact I have done that).

Even more:
People at DESY have tried some version of Tornado/VxWorks
where VxWorks is not a separate _OS_ for the PC but a _task_
running unter Windows95,
so then your PC can be both 'host' and 'IOC' at the same time.

However, I cannot remember the name of that VxWorks version.
I think it was not an original Windriver product and you loose
some real-time specs because VxWorks is just one task
among other Windows95 task.

Hope this helps,
-Kay