Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Andrew Johnson <[email protected]> · Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:15:23 -0500

>>   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:

> -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 ported the mv2100 BSP from VxWorks 5.5.2 up to 6.8 and now 6.9. I can
provide hints and maybe even patch files for that, but I'd probably need
to get permission from Wind River to send anyone the complete BSP.

There was a BSP for the mv2700 in VxWorks 6.4, so I have been making the
necessary changes to keep that building against our latest OS version.
IIRC the mv3100, mv5100 and mv6100 BSPs are all still available from
Wind River.

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

Standard Wind River licensing now requires an annual fee (if you stop
paying you lose the rights to build against any version) but I suspect
they will still sell you a perpetual license if you want one. The usual
fee is per-seat, with floating licenses costing about 3 times what a
named-user seat costs (IIRC you're allowed to change the name on each
seat up to about 4 times a year, but the permissions to do so are all
handled locally). They also sell somewhat cheaper licenses for automated
build systems where there is no right to use the Workbench GUI tool (our
licenses for CAT users like Mark are very similar to these).

Personally I would recommend switching to an Open Source OS like RTEMS,
but don't assume it's going to be free. Take (some of) the funds that
you would have paid Wind River and use them to pay RTEMS developers to
port/update the code you need or to write BSPs for your chosen hardware.
The advantage is that once you have working systems if your funding
starts to decrease you can stop paying, whereas with a commercial OS you
can't (or you have to pay more up-front for a perpetual license).

- Andrew

-- 
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Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System