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The code supplied with this book assumes that you will be using an IBM-PC/AT or compatible (80386 Minimum) computer running under DOS 4.x or higher. The code was compiled with the Borland C++ V4.51. You should have about 10 MBytes of free disk space on you your hard drive. I actually compiled and executed the sample code provided in this book on a 300 MHz Pentium II computer running Microsoft’s Windows 2000. I have successfully compiled and ran the code on Windows 95, 98 and NT based machines.
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As this was going on, I naively thought that it couldn’t be that difficult to write a kernel. All it needs to do is save and restore processor registers. That’s when I decided to try to write my own kernel (part-time, nights and weekends). It took me about a year to get the kernel to work as well, and in some ways better, than kernel A. I didn’t want to start a company and sell it because there were already about 50 kernels out there, so why have another one?
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A month or so before the book came out, I went to my first Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Santa Clara, California (September 1992). I met Tyler Sperry for the first time, and I showed him a copy of the first draft of my book. He very quickly glanced at it and asked if I would like to speak at the next Embedded Systems Conference in Atlanta. Not knowing any better, I said I would and asked him what I should talk about. He suggested “Using Small Real-Time Kernels.” On the trip back from California, I was thinking, “What did I get myself into? I’ve never spoken in front of a bunch of people before. What if I make a fool of myself? What if what I speak about is common knowledge? People pay good money to attend this conference.” For the next six months, I prepared my lecture. At the conference, I had more than 70 attendees. In the first twenty minutes, I must have lost one pound of sweat. After my lecture, about 15 people or so came up to me to say that they were very pleased with the lecture and liked my book. I was invited back to the conference but could not attend the one in Santa Clara that year (1993) since my wife was due to have our second child, Sabrina. I was able to attend the next conference in Boston (1994), and I have been a regular speaker at ESC ever since. For the past couple of years, I’ve been on the conference Advisory Committee. I now do at least three lectures at every conference and each has attendance between 100 and 300 people. My lectures are almost always ranked among the top 10% at the conference.
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µC/OS and µC/OS-II have been ported to over 40 different processor architectures and the number of ports is increasing. You should consult the Micrium web site to website to see if the processor you intend to use is available.
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