> That's all very interesting -- I used to write code like that. But to
> do it in Salvo takes just one line:
>
>         for (;;) OSSched();
>
> Time is money ...

I hope you're not seriously suggesting one should run out and buy an RTOS to
save writing a few tens of lines of code!  Evaluating RTOSs, ordering one,
installing it, and reading its documentation would take many times longer
than just writing the code.  Like you said, time is money.  And then you
have something that you know exactly how it works, and can modify for future
projects to suit.  All make versus buy decisions don't automatically come up
"buy" because you want people to buy your product.

I'm not against RTOSs in general, but they just don't make sense on really
small processors like the 16xxx PICs.  I've also noticed that most embedded
control problems don't need most of the features of most RTOSs.  There are
very few problems that can't be solved very nicely with a simple cooperative
task model where tasks can optionally sleep until some number of clock ticks
have elapsed.

I know you say you now program everything using your RTOS.  That only proves
an RTOS can be used if you really want to.  If you didn't have an RTOS and
didn't have the bias of trying to profit from one, you would find most
problems can be solved very well without one.


********************************************************************
Olin Lathrop, embedded systems consultant in Littleton Massachusetts
(978) 742-9014, olin@embedinc.com, http://www.embedinc.com

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