CompuServe Messages

Christian A micro-kernal OS is what it sounds like: a very small fast core of the most basic instructions. Based on this is a sort of highlevel language instruction set in which the more complex OS functions are written. A classic example is the Forth language, which is also it's own OS. The kernal is a very small threaded language and the higher level instructions are based on this set of threaded calls…which can be added to as needed by using a built in machine language compiler. So even the kernal is not "frozen" like most such systems, it can grow and create it's own instruction sets. I find it quite fascinating and it has been used to write several AI systems. For the Amiga it is called Jforth Professional, by the way, and there were some other versions. Unix really can't claim to be that elegant in my opinion, there are no examples of simple unix systems that can be run from a small embedded controller's 512K ROM, for instance. I would not expect NT could do that either. But I may be wrong here since I don't program in either. Hope that wasn't more than you wanted to hear. Tom alternate: jonest@hfsi.com I never met a man I didn't like…Will Rogers