Dale Botkin wrote:

>  I don't see a direct correlation between price
>and quality or utility, mostly a correlation between price and
>manufacturer support.

That's probably a better way of saying what I had intended to say. I
also use low-cost, good tools, too (like Creative Softworx Capture
Professional, WS-FTP, etc.)

A complex product like a compiler for multiple targets requires good
support, and that costs $$$.  Salvo actually ships with many _more_
libraries than any of the compilers we support (because there are
variants for each target processor, all in the name of providing the
smallest possible memory requirements for a particular set of
features), and all of that generation, maintenance and testing costs
money and time.

One of the measures we've employed in terms of picking compilers to
certify for Salvo has been the quality of _their_ support. We work
closely with compiler vendors to ensure that our end-users'
experience with Salvo is as trouble-free as possible. We have a very
good working relationship with Microchip and HI-TECH, and are
developing ones with others.

We also support free compilers, mainly those in the GNU C toolchain
(gcc for x86 is scheduled for Salvo v3.0, and gcc for 68hc11 is also
planned.).

and:

>Having never had a need to use an RTOS like Salvo, I don't really know
>much about it.  Again, though, I wasn't trying to make a point about
>whether PICC is a good product for the money or aything else.  Simply
>pointing out that the "entry fee", if you will, is probably the primary
>reason that particular project has not come to completion in a year.

 From a  business perspective, the "entry fee problem" is probably one
of our biggest challenges when marketing Salvo.  We are not a
compiler vendor, so all we can do is offer Salvo Lite as a stepping
stone to the full version of Salvo. In general, the 21- or 30-day or
application-size-limited eval versions of the compilers are good
enough to try with Salvo Lite to get a feeling for what Salvo / RTOS
programming is all about.

I didn't mean to hijack this thread into an RTOS discussion. I just
wanted to point out our (vested) interest in seeing the IDE
competition done in C. Salvo in assembler was a dead-end. Salvo in C
is blossoming.

Regards,
--

  ______________________________________
   Andrew E. Kalman, Ph.D.   aek@pumpkininc.com

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