neilbradley wrote on Saturday, October 21, 2006:
Thanks for the *! I’ll have a look at SafeRTOS a bit closer.
Regarding embedded Windows, I’ve done some work with that tree under CE and PPC. It’s actually quite a different beast than Microsoft’s desktop OSes and its scheduler is actually quite good. Hard real time? We shall see… but my environment doesn’t need a UI and runs in tiny memory and flash footprints, so it’s not suitable for my purposes anyway.
I also tend to be a bit obsessive about predictability, most notably because most of the software I work on must run for years. A lot of it becomes an odds game - if there’s a potential for a problem, it’s a real problem, and therefore must be avoided. This credo has served me well over the years in many embedded products.
Thanks again for the chat. I always appreciate a different perspective. Usually, either I learn something, someone else learns something, or we both learn something, and that’s cool.
FreeRTOS is quite solid. I’m monkeying around with it on a SAM7S256P board right now. Other than the odd queue problem I mentioned before, it’s working very well. Not to sound ingrateful, but FreeRTOS feels, shall we say, incomplete to me. Maybe it’s just because I come from the world of ThreadX, uCOS-II and VXWorks which has concepts of mutexes, counting semaphores, and event flags. I’m used to them.
But the saving grace is that I recognize that "incompleteness" is not really a bad thing in this case since the FreeRTOS kernel seems so solid. I view it as a VERY solid foundation for future features. I very much like the fact that the focus seems to be on having a very solid kernel rather than kitchen-sink syndrome. Richard is obviously a very intelligent and knowledgeable engineer, and generous to boot.
I’m currently evaluating FreeRTOS to replace another well known RTOS in a commercial project I’m working on. However, these missing features I need (some of which are environmental) I’ll either have to address within the kernel itself or write my own.
If you’re reading this Richard, thanks again for FreeRTOS. I’d love to contribute somehow, but I’m unsure how to proceed.
John, thanks again. I’m up in Portland, and the next time I’m in the bay area, I’ll drop you a note. Would love to chat embedded with a colleague! See ya!