Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Edmond Desmond <[email protected]> · Wed, 27 Jul 94 11:30:12 EDT

Tony writes:

> I've already made the committment to purchase an Alpha/OSF1 host with
> Motorola 167 support through DEC, so I think this is all a little too late
> for me. However, I have heard from our local WRS rep - Curt Shaker - that
> WRS also offer an OSF/1 support environment, currently as a `special purchase'.
> 
> For completeness, it would be nice to see the OSF/1 supporting host included
> in any discussions about special pricing. Another `source' for the RTOS would
> certainly be useful in a theoretical sense, and especially valuable for those
> of us who are obliged to navigate the rapids of a DOE laboratory purchasing
> system!
> 
> Tony Cox, SSRL
> 

Following Tim Mooney's lead I have called Don Woerner about a VxWorks 
development distributed development license. This license if for the 
development license for the PHENIX project which is a detector for the
RHIC accelerator at BNL.  This project will require development of EPICS
controls at a number of remote sites.
The deal from Wind River at present is that they seem willing to
grant a distributed development license for a single project as long as one
individual act as a focal point for distribution of vxworks software and
to act as a single point for questions to Wind River.  Large projects can
take advantage of this fact. However, this does not take advantage of the
EPICS collaboration itself.  If there is going to be any change in price
structure from Wind River, I feel that it will have to come from negotiations
with higher level officials at Wind River and a representative of the EPICS
collaboration.  The collaboration, at present, represents a large number of
sites which could possibly provide enough of a motivation to Wind
River to negotiate a price structure to EPICS collaborators. At least one
reason for useing VxWorks is the fact that we are useing EPICS. Wind River
may be receptive to such an arguement but there may have to be some mechanism
set up within the EPICS community to manage the VxWorks distributions.  They
(Wind River) seem to be receptive to a cost saving arguement on their part.

Ed Desmond, PHENIX

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System