Glass panels: what OS?

Greg Copeland wrote in
news
On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 07:44:49 -0700, C J Campbell wrote:

Well, chances are, it's actually embedded NT, but I'll defer if you
factually know otherwise. The concern is, NT has a long history of
crashing and being less than stable. This is true of embedded NT,
but to a much lessor degree. So, for someone to have concern about
the heart of an important navigation tool, I think falls well
outside of simple OS bigotry.

The Apollo MX-20 boot-up screen says Windows NT 4.0

I'm actually not sure that it makes the distinction during startup.
Technically, the embedded kernel is a slightly different animal from
the desktop/server brethren. No paging support, for example.


It has never failed. I have, however, seen the OS crash on Garmin
handheld GPS units. Frequently. To be honest, I would prefer the more
stable Windows OS.


Well, stability is always stated from a relative frame of reference.
Those that work higher up on the stability scale, tend to look down at
NT and consider it a toy OS.

All operating systems have a long history of crashing and being less
than

That's simply not true. NT has a long history of having one of the
worst stability records in the entire modern history of IT, short only
of DOS and perhaps early MACs (which had no MMU).

stable. It would be interesting to know why you think Win NT would be
unstable on something like the MX-20.

That would be because the OS is known to have stability issues and is
often less than reliable.

The device is dedicated to running one
program.

Yes, but that says very little about what's actually going on under
the covers. I don't have those details so I can only say we're
probably both ignorant of what's going on there.

It has no peripherals. It never runs for more than a few hours.

This is probably one of the saving graces for it. One of the problems
common to NT, especially in the 3-4.x days, is a number of memory
leaks in the kernel. I believe I remember reading that even the
embedded kernel still suffered from memory leaks, but I would not be
willing to walk out on a limb with that assertion.

Basically, all the issues supposedly making Win NT unstable simply do
not exist on a closed box like this.

With all due respect, that's simply not true. MS has had a number of
issues with their OS, ranging from memory leaks to kernel crashes.
The important question, as it relates to this topic, does the
application in question trigger any of the known problems and/or bugs
with the kernel? Which is why I asserted that the real world
performance should certainly override the list of valid and well
supported concerns. Notice that I am not saying, never buy a device
which has a MS OS in it. I'm simply saying, use caution and let real
world experience be your guide.

Personally, if I learn that a device is running a MS OS, I immediately
consider the device to be suspect until proven otherwise. That
doesn't mean that the alternative implementations (other devices) will
always be problem free. Just the same, the inclusion of a MS OS in a
device should always be treated as a yellow flag. Which means, use
caution until proven it's no longer needed.


Cheers,

Greg



This all being said, I work with a medical application that runs on
windows and we have had a lot of machines running 4.0 and our app ( and
nothing else ) that have run for very long periods of time 7x24. I think
our record is 1 year and it did not crash, we rebooted it to load a
newer version of the app. On the other hand I've had a workstation
running NT 4.0 and a slew of other things that crashed on a real regular
basis. It depends on the apps. NT and Dos before it has to support a
slew of wild hardware from a bunch of venders and sometime things went
boom in the night. Macs have had a much better rep for stability because
Apple laid down the law as to what could be done in terms of hardware and
software. Apple may have had a more stable system but Dos/NT/Intel took
over the world.

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 20:02:34 +0000, John Theune wrote:


This all being said, I work with a medical application that runs on
windows and we have had a lot of machines running 4.0 and our app ( and
nothing else ) that have run for very long periods of time 7x24. I think
our record is 1 year and it did not crash, we rebooted it to load a
newer version of the app. On the other hand I've had a workstation


This is actually a gray area. Having a long update is generally not a
problem for just about any OS. The problems occur when the system is
under load for extended periods of time. While uptimes of a year for NT
systems are not unheard of, they are a generally considered a minority.
In fact, most companies with serious business applications running on a MS
platform, generally make rebooting the systems part of their required
maintenance. Most companies attempt a reboot ranging from weekly to
bimonthly schedules. The reasons generally range from stability, latency
issues, memory leaks, locked resources (because of the predominately
threaded environment), and overall degraded performance (generally
associated with memory fragmentation).

For many commercial Unix systems, uptime is commonly measured in years
(multiples). For many highend IBM systems, stories of machines running
for 15-20+ years, non-stop, are not unheard of. And then, those systems
lost power only because they were decommissioned.

If you don't mind me asking, what does your medical application do?

boom in the night. Macs have had a much better rep for stability
because Apple laid down the law as to what could be done in terms of
hardware and software. Apple may have had a more stable system but
Dos/NT/Intel took over the world.

Keep in mind that early macs did not have MMUs (Memory Management Units),
which is what provided protection for one process against another.
Likewise, it's also what prevents OS corruption from applications bugs.

Just rambling on I guess...

Cheers.