Re: [ECOS] i386 questions

[Mike Friedrichs <mike_fr1 at lcc dot net>]

Gary Thomas wrote:
> 
> On 03-Jun-00 Mike Friedrichs wrote:
> > anyone,
> >
> > i'm confused about ecos and porting to i386. on the ecos home page they
> > make reference to i386 as a supported target, but upon viewing posts, it
> > appears that people are building the port to i386. which is it.
> >
> > i have found the words 'synthetic x86 linux' and synthetic i386' for
> > targets; what do these phrases mean.
> >
> 
> Have you checked the latest sources from CVS?  This is the best way to
> keep up with what's available.
> 
> Actually, we have supported ports for both.
>   * Synthetic x86 Linux - A pseudo target where eCos applications run as
>     Linux programs.
>   * x86 "PC" - a target for standard "PC" boxes, running stand alone where
>     the eCos application is the only thing running on the platform.
> 
> > assuming ecos has not been ported to i386, why has ecos been ported to
> > the 'Intel StrongArm family' and not the 'i386 family'.
> 
> Don't forget what eCos stands for: "Embedded Configurable Operating System".
> As such, our primary interest is in commercially used, embedded platforms.
> The ARM/StrongARM family of processors is certainly one of the most popular
> architectures for such devices and becoming more so every day.  While the
> i386 architecture is also very poplular, it is not normally deployed into
> the very deeply embedded systems we concentrate on (think cell phones, etc).
> 
> If you're really interested in the i386 support and find that what's out there
> already isn't sufficient, get the sources and add to them.  This is the heart
> of Open Source projects - everyone has the ability to do whatever they want
> and/or need.  If you find you need help or want even more, just ask us, that's
> part of how we "drive" the development.  Requests can be sent to:
>   ecos-info@cygnus.com

the reason i'm looking at i386 is because we have already built in-house
embedded pc's developed around the i386 with a/d's, serial, and network
support. we built our own in-house real time os using dos and a pharlap
dos-extender. but if i can adapt eCos with the posix syntax to our
present architecture i would be thrilled. the one thing i would like to
add is a shell; like tcsh or similar. then you could add a keyboard and
ascii monitor and be able to run as a network client in the console
mode. 

i've been searching around for cvs, but couldn't find any development
addressing the i386 archititure. could some one point in the right
direction.

i noticed that there is a recent release for using win/nt/98 as a host.
is there any advantage to this approach versus using linux redhat 6.2.

thanks again