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Date:      Thu, 19 Dec 1996 13:29:21 -0700 (MST)
From:      Softweyr LLC <softweyr@xmission.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: embed
Message-ID:  <199612192029.NAA09438@xmission.xmission.com>

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> does anyone know of anything about "embedded" (romed) UNIXs ?
> i saw Linux had a project - but nothing working (ELKS) ...
> is FreeBSD ROMable ?  anyone ever try it ?
> or is the idea ridiculous?

Ridiculous, no, overkill - probably.  If you really need something
small enough to run in a romable environment, UNIX is probably going to
carry a lot of baggage you don't need.


> or any other advice on a portable ROMable standard ?
> 386 CPU ok - but NO drives (moving parts) ...

Sure.  As a good starting point, see

	http://www.pso.com/realtime.html

I recommend looking at u/COS and RTEMS in particular.  I'm just
starting to investigate these systems now, using FreeBSD and GNU tools
as a development environment, and 386ex and NS486 eval systems as
targets.

> no sales pitches please!

Who, me?

> i also hear that writing device drivers can be a real pain in the butt for
> UNIX (A2D cards, etc) ?  any comments ?

Writing device drivers for UNIX is certainly no more painful than
writing device drivers for any other OS.  You at least have a kernel
debugger in FreeBSD and *rarely* ;^) have to resort to logic analyzers,
o-scopes, etc.  Don't let the DOS-heads in the world frighten you about
working inside UNIX; at least you have the source to the system, and to
other drivers.


-- 
          "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"

Wes Peters                                                       Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr                       softweyr@xmission.com



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