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<== Date ==> <== Thread ==>

Subject: RE: Ideas / Suggestions for the future of VME-CPU Operating Systems
From: Mark Rivers <[email protected]>
To: Goetz Pfeiffer <[email protected]>, EPICS tech-talk <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2017 12:25:09 +0000
Hi,


> A possibility would be to use vxWorks again. Our current vxWorks version is very old and has to be updated. Problems here:

>   MVME2100 boards do not seem to be supported by vxWorks

>   Possibly high costs for CPU licenses for vxWorks 6


I don't think it is true that MVME2100 boards are not supported by vxWorks 6.  We are running vxWorks 6.9.4.1 on our systems at the APS.  These are the board support packages that Andrew Johnson maintains:

corvette:local/vw/VX6941>ls -ltr
total 42504
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2955989 Apr 14  2015 mv2100-dev4-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2782380 Apr 14  2015 mv2100-dev4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2998811 Apr 14  2015 mv6100-dev4-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2824818 Apr 14  2015 mv6100-dev4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2975502 Apr 14  2015 mv5100-dev4-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2801685 Apr 14  2015 mv5100-dev4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2945604 Apr 14  2015 mv3100-dev4-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2774906 Apr 14  2015 mv3100-dev4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2906763 Apr 14  2015 mv2700-dev4-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2732882 Apr 14  2015 mv2700-dev4
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2998807 Jul 30  2015 mv6100-dev6-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2975357 Jul 30  2015 mv5100-dev6-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2945536 Jul 30  2015 mv3100-dev6-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2906618 Jul 30  2015 mv2700-dev6-debug
-rwxr-xr-x 1 epics domain users 2955828 Jul 30  2015 mv2100-dev6-debug

Note that the 2100, 2700, 3100, 5100, and 6100 are supported.  I am using 2700 and 5100 cards.  I found that as my EPICS application got larger the 32MB of memory on the 2100 was getting tight, but I was able to cheaply upgrade the memory on my old 2700 boards from 32MB to 64MB and they are working fine.  If I were to strip out the things I don't really need for each IOC I am sure that the 2100 with 32MB would still work.

I can't comment on the licensing costs since we are covered under an old APS site license that has quite good terms.

Mark



________________________________
From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Goetz Pfeiffer [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 4:28 AM
To: EPICS tech-talk
Subject: Ideas / Suggestions for the future of VME-CPU Operating Systems


Hello,

at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (https://www.helmholtz-berlin.de/) we use EPICS for our control system.

We have a growing number of soft IOCs with Linux and VME bus based IOCs mostly running RTEMS and
some vxWorks 5.4 (Tornado 2.02).

Our CPU boards are MVME162 and MVME2100. We have replaced more than half of the old MVME162 boards with
MVME2100 boards, of which we bought a large supply some years ago.

After migrating most VME CPUs to RTEMS 4.9 we have run into some problems:

  *   Newer CPU boards like the MVME5500 require the "beatnik" board support, which only works with RTEMS 4.10
  *   RTEMS 4.10 has some problems regarding the "cexp" shell and doesn't work on some of our IOCs.
  *   cexp, the shell for RTEMS is not compatible with RTEMS 4.11 and 4.12, but we need it for dynamic loading of objects
  *   gesys, the component that is used to create the RTEMS kernel seems to be a bit of a mess
  *   RTEMS 4.11 and 4.12 are not supported by the EPICS base
  *   Debian Packages for RTEMS are no longer maintained
  *   The intersection of the people using RTEMS and the ones using EPICS seems to be small and getting smaller, so with problems we are much on our own

A possibility would be to use vxWorks again. Our current vxWorks version is very old and has to be updated. Problems here:

  *   MVME2100 boards do not seem to be supported by vxWorks 6
  *   Possibly high costs for CPU licenses for vxWorks

What are your experiences with this ?

Do you still use VME bus systems ?

Is there a future for RTEMS in EPICS control systems ?

Are there alternatives to RTEMS and vxWorks ?

Greetings,

  Goetz Pfeiffer

Replies:
Re: Ideas / Suggestions for the future of VME-CPU Operating Systems Andrew Johnson
References:
Ideas / Suggestions for the future of VME-CPU Operating Systems Goetz Pfeiffer

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