Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"TYLER, Paul" <[email protected]> · Wed, 6 Nov 2002 14:58:17 +1100

Hi.

I've been lurking for a while and reading up on EPICS but think it is time for a question.  We have
been using a home grown control system for our Tandem accelerator that has never really met user's
expectations.  I've been looking at various options to upgrade or redo our control system and
believe EPICS is a good choice for us.  Currently we have VME based hardware with MVME147 processor
cards.  I think it is a lost cause trying to utilise the MVME147s and for the cost of a VxWorks
licences for them, we can upgrade our cards and use a free O.S.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on CPU cards for (old) VME crates that might be
suitable for EPICS?  We are trying hard to avoid VxWorks due to the expense.  So that leaves us with
RTEMS or even just running IOCs under Linux.  Our current response times are measured in seconds so
while Linux isn't a "Real Time" OS and has some latency issues, it may well be quite ok.  (Any
comments about that are welcome.)  We don't need huge processing power either.  (We just cope with
the MVME147s.)

So my major question and then a minor one.  Any suggestions on replacement VME processor cards with
Operating System options?  Price is a consideration.  We also have a preference for cards that can
run Linux and RTEMS.  Also is anyone running with Pentium based systems?

If you have any other comments, they would also be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Paul Tyler

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System