Re:

>My question is, why people are telling me that i need
>a RTOS ( Real Time Operating System ) to develop an
>embedded system? They are telling me that drivers need
>to be written, so on and so forth. Why?
>What role does the RTOS play?


Some of the responses you got (I found Peter Tiang's and Robert
Griffith's to be exceptionally well-put) w/regard to RTOSes do an
excellent job of describing the how and why of RTOSes in general.
And the uC/OS-II book is a very good read.

Olin Lathrop is, as usual, very anti-RTOS-on-a-PIC, but he is, after
all, Olin ... :-) I personally have just about stopped writing
non-RTOS PIC apps, because with the RTOS approach I get things done
so much faster. But I do have a vested interest ion Salvo ...

Our RTOS, which is available for all PICmicro devices, is also
available in a freeware version called Salvo Lite. You may want to
download it and take it for a spin. The Salvo User manual has a
chapter dedicated to RTOS fundamentals -- not as in-depth as Jean
Labrosse's book, but a good starting point, and free for the
downloading.

Also, Microchip recently released App Note AN777 which details the
use of Salvo on a PIC16F877.

Regards,
--

  ______________________________________
Andrew E. Kalman, Ph.D.


Salvo(TM), The RTOS that runs in tiny places(TM)
Pumpkin, Inc.
750 Naples Street
San Francisco, CA 94112
tel: (415) 584-6360
fax: (415) 585-7948
web: http://www.pumpkininc.com
email: aek@pumpkininc.com

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