µC/OS-II User Manual

This book describes the design and implementation of µC/OS-II (pronounced “Micro C O S 2”), which stands for Micro-Controller Operating System Version 2.

µC/OS-II is a completely portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive, real-time, multitasking kernel. µC/OS-II is written in ANSI C and contains a small portion of assembly language code to adapt it to different processor architectures. To date, µC/OS-II has been ported to over 40 different processor architectures ranging from 8- to 64-bit CPUs.

µC/OS-II is based on µC/OS, The Real-Time Kernel that was first published in 1992. Thousands of people around the world are using µC/OS and µC/OS-II in all kinds of applications, such as cameras, avionics, high-end audio equipment, medical instruments, musical instruments, engine controls, network adapters, highway telephone call boxes, ATM machines, industrial robots, and more. Numerous colleges and universities have also used µC/OS and µC/OS-II to teach students about real-time systems.

µC/OS-II is upward compatible with µC/OS V1.11 (the last released version) but provides many improvements. If you currently have an application that runs with µC/OS, it should run virtually unchanged with µC/OS-II. All of the services (i.e., function calls) provided by µC/OS have been preserved. You may, however, have to change include files and product build files to “point” to the new filenames.

This book contains all the source code for µC/OS-II and ports for the Intel 80x86 processor running in real mode and for the large model. The code was developed and executed on a PC running Microsoft’s Windows 2000 but should work just as well on Windows 95, 98 and NT. Examples run in a DOS-compatible box under these environments. Development was done using the Borland International C/C++ compiler V4.51. Although µC/OS-II was developed and tested on a PC, µC/OS-II was actually targeted for embedded systems and can be ported easily to many different processor architectures.