RadiSys: Support and Service Microware Software X86 FAQs

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Topics

General Information

Services and Facilities

Hardware Requirements

Product Contents

Development Environment

Porting Issues

Device Drivers

1. General Information

1.1. What is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium?

Microware Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is available in both a board level solution (BLS) and embedded systems versions (OEM). The difference between these two packages is that the Board Level Solution contains no source code and is most beneficial for standard off the shelf PC compatible systems. OS-9® for Embedded System contains driver source code and can be ported to custom hardware. Both products contain the following software components:

OS-9® Developer's Kit

Hawk™ IDE

MAUI Graphics and Multimedia

SoftStax™/LAN Communications Pak

Configuration Wizard

1.2. How does Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium fit with other Microware products?

Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is a complete and mature OS-9® run-time environment for the X86/Pentium family of processors. The proven track record of OS-9® for X86/Pentium means less work for the systems developer.

1.3. When will Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium be available?

Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is available now.

1.4. For what types of applications is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium designed?

Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is specifically designed for real-time applications. These applications include machine and process control, signal processing, cellular phones, intelligent communication devices, on-line image enhancement, games, etc. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is not limited to these applications.

1.5. What Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium ports are currently available?

The industry standard PC-AT is the most widely used target machine. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium has been proven on many reference platforms and embedded applications.

1.6. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium easy to use?

Yes. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium comes with extensive documentation so a developer can quickly learn how to use it. GUI configuration tools and developer environments get the first time user up and running quickly.

1.7. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium a scalable kernel?

Yes. File systems, communications, device drivers and other
components are modular and can be added or removed as needed.

1.8. What host development platforms are supported?

Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 are supported.

1.9. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium Year 2000 compliant?

Yes, Microware is committed to the Year 2000 standard prepared by British Standards Institution (BSI) committee BDD/1/-/3. This standard ensures compliance by providing four basic rules:

No value for current date will cause any interruption in operation.

Date-based functionality must behave consistently for dates prior to, during, and after the Year 2000.

In all interfaces and data storage, the century in any date must be specified either explicitly or by unambiguous algorithms or inferencing rules.

Year 2000 must be recognized as a leap year.

1.10 Does OS-9® support execute-in-place?

Yes, applications may run directly out of ROM or flash, saving memory.

2. Services and Facilities

2.1. What types of services does the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel provide?

The major functional groups of Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium include:

Kernel services including task management, time and time-of-day, events, semaphores, alarms, memory pools, physical I/O, system fault and processor exception handling, and System and User state debugging.

Networking

Graphics

File Managers, including PCMCIA, SCSI, block devices, serial devices and others.

2.2. Does the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel support pre-emptive multi-tasking?

Yes, OS-9's scheduling algorithm is is optimized for real-time performance and may be fine tuned for specific applications or systems.

2.3. How many processes will the kernel support simultaneously?

Key system data structures are handled on linked lists so the limit is really the amount of memory in the system.

2.4. Can tasks be dynamically created and destroyed? Can priorities be changed dynamically?

Yes and yes. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is a fully dynamic system. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel resources can be created and destroyed during the lifetime of the system. At the programmer's option, tasks may also be statically created at system initialization.

2.5. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium a ROM-able kernel?

Yes, Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium may be put in ROM, flash or booted off of disk, floppy disk, PCMCIA device or a network.

2.6. Does Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium support memory protection?

Yes, Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium supports full process level memory protection.

2.7. What are other features of the OS-9® kernel?

The Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel API is independent of the hardware details of the processor board on which it executes. OS-9's modular architecture easily supports additional functionality.

2.8. How many task priority levels are there within OS-9?

There are 65,536 levels of task priority.

2.9. Does OS-9® support a networked file system?

Yes, OS-9® supports Networked Files Systems (NFS). NFS lets you transparently access files on most UNIX systems, and many non-UNIX systems, including Windows. NFS is included at no additional cost.

2.10. Does OS-9® support the standard DOS FAT file system?

OS-9's PCF file manager supports standard DOS floppies and disk partitions.

3. Hardware Requirements

3.1. What are the minimum hardware features required for the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel to run?

A system ticker and a VGA/keyboard or serial system console (monitor/keyboard or serial port & terminal) are needed on the board target during development. The system console may not be needed in the production system and can be removed easily. The system ticker can also be removed from the production system, but then timed waits are not supported within the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel due to lack of a time-keeping device.

3.2. Can the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel support privileged and non-privileged modes of operation?

Yes. The Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel can support privileged and non-privileged modes of operation.

3.3. What are the code space requirements of the operating system kernel?

The Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel can be dynamically configured as a minimal kernel, containing only the service calls used by the application, or the kernel can be configured as a full function kernel, containing all the system services.

3.4. What is the minimum hardware requirements for Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium?

Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is designed to run on systems from 386-SX with as little as two megabytes of RAM to multi-user power systems.

3.5. Do I need to reformat or partition my computer's hard drive to evaluate Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium?

No. You may evaluate Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium by simply using the configuration builder utility to make an OS-9® boot floppy.

4. Product Contents

4.1. What does the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium CD contain?

Microware's Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is actually three products packaged on a single CD-ROM. The OS-9® Evaluation Package includes the OS-9® System Software object code for X86/Pentium; a 60-day evaluation copy of Hawk IDE, Microware's cross-hosted development solution; and a 60-day evaluation copy of Microware's new configuration builder tool, graphics, networking, and on-line documentation.

The board level solution product includes everything in the evaluation package with full production versions of Microware's Hawk development environment and configuration builder tool.

The OEM package includes everything in the board level solution package with the addition of full driver source code. This package allows OEMs to port and install OS-9® on their custom hardware and develop their own applications. The package includes a license to distribute Microware's OS-9® in their products.

4.2. Is source code provided with the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium product?

Driver source is included with the OEM package.

**4.3. What is Microware's Wizard?

The Wizard is a Windows 95/98/NT hosted utility which provides a point-and-click GUI interface to configure an OS-9® system image. The Wizard is an alternative to the command line interface. Use of the Wizard is optional since all OS-9® configuration and system preparation can also be done at the command line.

4.4. Why is Microware's Wizard a beneficial feature for my development process?

The Wizard makes it easier to configure and build an OS-9® system image without learning the command line interface. Just follow the point-and-click GUI interface to create your system. A help system is provided within the Wizard to guide the user during the system configuration and build process.

5. Development Environment and Toolchain

5.1. What development hosts are supported?

Windows 95/98 and Windows NT hosts are supported for Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium.

5.2. What is resident development?

Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium includes a command line compiler, source debugger and assembly language debugger which runs on the target OS-9® machine. Use of the resident toolkit is optional as Windows hosted GUI development is also supported.

5.3. What development languages are supported?

C, C++ and assembler are supported.

5.4. Are source code debuggers available for OS-9? Is an ICE required?

Full source debugging is supported with both the Windows hosted tools and the resident tool set. An ICE is not required for OS-9® development, but it can be used as a development aid.

5.5. Is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) available for OS-9?

Yes, Microware's Hawk product is included with the package and provides a full function IDE.

5.6. What is needed in the target to support full debugging capabilities?

Full debugging support is built into the OS-9® kernel. An Ethernet connection is recommended for cross-hosted development.

6. Porting Issues

6.1. Can a customer use the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium CD to port to another X86/Pentium targeted board?

Yes, full driver and initialization source code is provided with the OEM kit.

6.2. If I have the OS-9® for Embedded Systems (X86/Pentium) package, and I wish to port to my own X86/Pentium embedded board, what development should I be expected to do?

For a board port to a processor architecture already supported by OS-9, a customer will need to write the board initialization code, a ticker device driver, and a serial console device driver. This is the minimum development required. In many cases these device drivers already exist as much of the hardware used with the X86/Pentium family of processors is standard. If the customer wishes to support other devices for the new board port, the customer will have to write those device drivers or modify an existing device driver supplied with the product.

7. Device Drivers

7.1. Does OS-9® provide an input/output (I/O) architecture within its design for device drivers?

Yes, full I/O support is provided for many devices.

7.2. What types of devices does the device driver interface support?

The device driver interface supports serial devices (i.e.: terminals, serial ports), random block devices (i.e.: disks, RAM disks), graphics, networking, sequential block devices (i.e.: tape) and many others.

7.3. What Ethernet Drivers are supported?

A partial list of supported Ethernet drivers includes:

3COM PCI EtherLink XL

3COM PCI EtherLink III

3COM ISA EtherLink III

SMC Ultra 83C790

SMC 8390

3COM EtherLink III PC CARD

DEC 21140

Am79C961A

7.4. What graphics drivers are supported?

A partial list of supported graphics drivers includes:

Generic VGA mode 13 (320x200x8bpp)

Generic VGA mode 12 & "X" (640x480x4bpp & 360x480x8bpp)

Cirrus Alpine Series - CL-GC5434, CL-GD5480 etc. (up to 1024x768x24bpp)

7.5. What support is available for sequential devices?

Support is available for:

VGA Graphics/Keyboard

Serial Mouse

PS2 Mouse

16550 Serial

Digiboard

HostessI

Risicom

Parallel Printer

7.6. What type of disks and controllers are supported?**

Support is available for the following disks and controllers:

Standard IDE

PCMCIA IDE

PC AT Style Floppy

Symbios 810, 810A, 825A and 875 PCI SCSI controllers. Wide, Ultra and Ultra Wide.

Diamond FirePort20 and FirePort40. Wide, Ultra and Ultra Wide.

Adaptec 1540/1542 ISA

Adaptec 1940, 2940U and 2940UW

Back to FAQ's
FAQ: Microware OS-9® for X86/Pentium

1.	General Information
	1.1. What is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium?
	Microware Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is available in both a board level solution (BLS) and embedded systems versions (OEM). The difference between these two packages is that the Board Level Solution contains no source code and is most beneficial for standard off the shelf PC compatible systems. OS-9® for Embedded System contains driver source code and can be ported to custom hardware. Both products contain the following software components: OS-9® Developer's Kit Hawk™ IDE MAUI Graphics and Multimedia SoftStax™/LAN Communications Pak Configuration Wizard
	1.2. How does Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium fit with other Microware products?
	Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is a complete and mature OS-9® run-time environment for the X86/Pentium family of processors. The proven track record of OS-9® for X86/Pentium means less work for the systems developer.
	1.3. When will Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium be available?
	Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is available now.
	1.4. For what types of applications is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium designed?
	Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is specifically designed for real-time applications. These applications include machine and process control, signal processing, cellular phones, intelligent communication devices, on-line image enhancement, games, etc. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is not limited to these applications.
	1.5. What Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium ports are currently available?
	The industry standard PC-AT is the most widely used target machine. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium has been proven on many reference platforms and embedded applications.
	1.6. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium easy to use?
	Yes. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium comes with extensive documentation so a developer can quickly learn how to use it. GUI configuration tools and developer environments get the first time user up and running quickly.
	1.7. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium a scalable kernel?
	Yes. File systems, communications, device drivers and other components are modular and can be added or removed as needed.
	1.8. What host development platforms are supported?
	Windows 95/98 and Windows NT 4.0 are supported.
	1.9. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium Year 2000 compliant?
	Yes, Microware is committed to the Year 2000 standard prepared by British Standards Institution (BSI) committee BDD/1/-/3. This standard ensures compliance by providing four basic rules: No value for current date will cause any interruption in operation. Date-based functionality must behave consistently for dates prior to, during, and after the Year 2000. In all interfaces and data storage, the century in any date must be specified either explicitly or by unambiguous algorithms or inferencing rules. Year 2000 must be recognized as a leap year.
	1.10 Does OS-9® support execute-in-place?
	Yes, applications may run directly out of ROM or flash, saving memory.

2.	Services and Facilities
	2.1. What types of services does the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel provide?
	The major functional groups of Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium include: Kernel services including task management, time and time-of-day, events, semaphores, alarms, memory pools, physical I/O, system fault and processor exception handling, and System and User state debugging. Networking Graphics File Managers, including PCMCIA, SCSI, block devices, serial devices and others.
	2.2. Does the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel support pre-emptive multi-tasking?
	Yes, OS-9's scheduling algorithm is is optimized for real-time performance and may be fine tuned for specific applications or systems.
	2.3. How many processes will the kernel support simultaneously?
	Key system data structures are handled on linked lists so the limit is really the amount of memory in the system.
	2.4. Can tasks be dynamically created and destroyed? Can priorities be changed dynamically?
	Yes and yes. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is a fully dynamic system. Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel resources can be created and destroyed during the lifetime of the system. At the programmer's option, tasks may also be statically created at system initialization.
	2.5. Is Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium a ROM-able kernel?
	Yes, Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium may be put in ROM, flash or booted off of disk, floppy disk, PCMCIA device or a network.
	2.6. Does Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium support memory protection?
	Yes, Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium supports full process level memory protection.
	2.7. What are other features of the OS-9® kernel?
	The Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel API is independent of the hardware details of the processor board on which it executes. OS-9's modular architecture easily supports additional functionality.
	2.8. How many task priority levels are there within OS-9?
	There are 65,536 levels of task priority.
	2.9. Does OS-9® support a networked file system?
	Yes, OS-9® supports Networked Files Systems (NFS). NFS lets you transparently access files on most UNIX systems, and many non-UNIX systems, including Windows. NFS is included at no additional cost.
	2.10. Does OS-9® support the standard DOS FAT file system?
	OS-9's PCF file manager supports standard DOS floppies and disk partitions.

3.	Hardware Requirements
	3.1. What are the minimum hardware features required for the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium operating system kernel to run?
	A system ticker and a VGA/keyboard or serial system console (monitor/keyboard or serial port & terminal) are needed on the board target during development. The system console may not be needed in the production system and can be removed easily. The system ticker can also be removed from the production system, but then timed waits are not supported within the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel due to lack of a time-keeping device.
	3.2. Can the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel support privileged and non-privileged modes of operation?
	Yes. The Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel can support privileged and non-privileged modes of operation.
	3.3. What are the code space requirements of the operating system kernel?
	The Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium kernel can be dynamically configured as a minimal kernel, containing only the service calls used by the application, or the kernel can be configured as a full function kernel, containing all the system services.
	3.4. What is the minimum hardware requirements for Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium?
	Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is designed to run on systems from 386-SX with as little as two megabytes of RAM to multi-user power systems.
	3.5. Do I need to reformat or partition my computer's hard drive to evaluate Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium?
	No. You may evaluate Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium by simply using the configuration builder utility to make an OS-9® boot floppy.

4.	Product Contents
	4.1. What does the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium CD contain?
	Microware's Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium is actually three products packaged on a single CD-ROM. The OS-9® Evaluation Package includes the OS-9® System Software object code for X86/Pentium; a 60-day evaluation copy of Hawk IDE, Microware's cross-hosted development solution; and a 60-day evaluation copy of Microware's new configuration builder tool, graphics, networking, and on-line documentation. The board level solution product includes everything in the evaluation package with full production versions of Microware's Hawk development environment and configuration builder tool. The OEM package includes everything in the board level solution package with the addition of full driver source code. This package allows OEMs to port and install OS-9® on their custom hardware and develop their own applications. The package includes a license to distribute Microware's OS-9® in their products.
	4.2. Is source code provided with the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium product?
	Driver source is included with the OEM package.
	*4.3. What is Microware's Wizard?*
	The Wizard is a Windows 95/98/NT hosted utility which provides a point-and-click GUI interface to configure an OS-9® system image. The Wizard is an alternative to the command line interface. Use of the Wizard is optional since all OS-9® configuration and system preparation can also be done at the command line.
	*4.4. Why is Microware's* Wizard a beneficial feature for my development process?**
	The Wizard makes it easier to configure and build an OS-9® system image without learning the command line interface. Just follow the point-and-click GUI interface to create your system. A help system is provided within the Wizard to guide the user during the system configuration and build process.

5.	Development Environment and Toolchain
	5.1. What development hosts are supported?
	Windows 95/98 and Windows NT hosts are supported for Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium.
	5.2. What is resident development?
	Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium includes a command line compiler, source debugger and assembly language debugger which runs on the target OS-9® machine. Use of the resident toolkit is optional as Windows hosted GUI development is also supported.
	5.3. What development languages are supported?
	C, C++ and assembler are supported.
	5.4. Are source code debuggers available for OS-9? Is an ICE required?
	Full source debugging is supported with both the Windows hosted tools and the resident tool set. An ICE is not required for OS-9® development, but it can be used as a development aid.
	5.5. Is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) available for OS-9?
	Yes, Microware's Hawk product is included with the package and provides a full function IDE.
	5.6. What is needed in the target to support full debugging capabilities?
	Full debugging support is built into the OS-9® kernel. An Ethernet connection is recommended for cross-hosted development.

6.	Porting Issues
	6.1. Can a customer use the Enhanced OS-9® for X86/Pentium CD to port to another X86/Pentium targeted board?
	Yes, full driver and initialization source code is provided with the OEM kit.
	6.2. If I have the OS-9® for Embedded Systems (X86/Pentium) package, and I wish to port to my own X86/Pentium embedded board, what development should I be expected to do?
	For a board port to a processor architecture already supported by OS-9, a customer will need to write the board initialization code, a ticker device driver, and a serial console device driver. This is the minimum development required. In many cases these device drivers already exist as much of the hardware used with the X86/Pentium family of processors is standard. If the customer wishes to support other devices for the new board port, the customer will have to write those device drivers or modify an existing device driver supplied with the product.

7.	Device Drivers
	7.1. Does OS-9® provide an input/output (I/O) architecture within its design for device drivers?
	Yes, full I/O support is provided for many devices.
	7.2. What types of devices does the device driver interface support?
	The device driver interface supports serial devices (i.e.: terminals, serial ports), random block devices (i.e.: disks, RAM disks), graphics, networking, sequential block devices (i.e.: tape) and many others.
	7.3. What Ethernet Drivers are supported?
	A partial list of supported Ethernet drivers includes: 3COM PCI EtherLink XL 3COM PCI EtherLink III 3COM ISA EtherLink III SMC Ultra 83C790 SMC 8390 3COM EtherLink III PC CARD DEC 21140 Am79C961A
	7.4. What graphics drivers are supported?
	A partial list of supported graphics drivers includes: Generic VGA mode 13 (320x200x8bpp) Generic VGA mode 12 & "X" (640x480x4bpp & 360x480x8bpp) Cirrus Alpine Series - CL-GC5434, CL-GD5480 etc. (up to 1024x768x24bpp)
	7.5. What support is available for sequential devices?
	Support is available for: VGA Graphics/Keyboard Serial Mouse PS2 Mouse 16550 Serial Digiboard HostessI Risicom Parallel Printer
	7.6. What type of disks and controllers are supported?
	Support is available for the following disks and controllers: Standard IDE PCMCIA IDE PC AT Style Floppy Symbios 810, 810A, 825A and 875 PCI SCSI controllers. Wide, Ultra and Ultra Wide. Diamond FirePort20 and FirePort40. Wide, Ultra and Ultra Wide. Adaptec 1540/1542 ISA Adaptec 1940, 2940U and 2940UW