Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

>We presently have 15 BITBUS Master nodes
>installed, and 4 more required.  The present Master's run on 10 PC's, and would
>be replaced by at least 6 VME Crates using probably 68040's.  The cost of 
>purchasing this added equipment make the PC solution look attractive.  Any
>comments about using PC's? dependabilty, reliability, etc?

Well, if you don't buy some el-cheapo thing that was manufactured in
some guys basement, I would think you would do OK.

If, however, you don't have an intel CPU in your PCs you might run into 
some wierdness with the floating point code.  I have been messing with
NetBSD at home for a year now (a PD port of BSD 4.3 Unix to the PC) and
there have been a number of horrer stories from guys that are trying to
run it on the clone CPUs... primairly in the areas of the FPU, cache and
less common motherboard chipsets.  I suspect that if Wind Rivers is just
now finishing up their first 486 port (as you mention) it could easily
fall prey to the same fiascos.  Definitely check with them to see if
they have tested the thing with your motherboard... or at least your
CPU and motherboard chipset.

--John Winans

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