> >What is the current state of plex86?
>
> Early. We do not run "real-world" OSes yet, though we're
> getting closer
> every day. However...
>
> >Let me give
> >you some background and explain my goals. I'm a
> >firmware engineer. Most of work is targeted to one
> >of the many RTOSes: VxWorks, pSOS, OSE or RT-Linux.
> >I typically develop my application firmware on a
> >workstation then migrate it to the target OS on an
> >x86 platform. The RTOSes give me a way to write my
> >app and the kernel to a bootable floppy. I boot off
> >this floppy to do my final round of testing and
> >debugging. I would prefer to point plex86 to an
> >image of the floppy on my harddrive and do most,
> >if not all of my development through plex86. Is
> >this currently realistic?
>
> At this moment, no, but it may be soon. However, I'd like some more
> information about the real-time nature of your applications. You can
> imagine that as plex86 does timesharing of the guest OS with other
> applications on the host, timing is a problem. Don't expect real-time
> behavior from the guest ! If the nature of your work (firmware, so
> hardware driving) requires obeying hard-realtime deadlines,
> it is likely
> you will never be able to use plex86 for this purpose.
>
No, I don't intend to write firmware drivers on anything
but real hardware. Nor do I expect it to be real-time.
That too needs real hardware. But most the components:
UI, communication protocols, and such could be written on
an emulator.
So it sounds promising!
Thanks,
Mark
