[olug] 3Com NICs, QNX & “upgrading to W2K"

[IrishMASMS]

Greetings fellow OLUGers!

Telling the story of a recent eBay sale to CMM & WBH the other night;
after we all laughed our ass off we wonder what they needed four 3Com
3C503-TP EtherLink II TP Network Interface Cards.

Here is a picture of one of them:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/IrishMASMS/images/3comEtherlink2TP/3comEtherlink2TP.jpg

Yes, they purchased four 8 bit ISA NICs. And yes, I was also wondering
what they needed them for and why they were willing to pay as much as they
did.

So, when the buyer emailed me back to let me know they had arrived & all
was well I asked him what they needed them for.

Here is his reply:

<i>
Irish,
We have a $2 million boiler that produces steam to run our 25,000 pound
forge hammers.  The cards go into computers that constantly monitor the
boiler, keeping it within specs so it doesn't create a $10,000,000 pile of
rubble.  Those computers are running software that will only run on a
Canadian UNIX operating system called QNX (q-nix).  QNX, at least the
version we are running, apparently doesn't recognize hardware manufactured
after about 1994.  (We haven't been able to find any drivers, anyway).
So, these cards are giving us some time to upgrade the entire system to
Windows-compatible software, which will give us far more flexibility in
hardware.  Of course, this should have been done before the existing cards
started to fail, but (insert standard excuses here).
To see pictures of the forging process, go to www.clifford-jacobs.com.
Thanks for your help in this frantic operation.  And thank God for E-bay.
Greg
</i>

So, I emailed him back:

<i>
Greg - I am surprised that those systems will not run Linux or BSD.
FWIW, I have installed a few flavors of Linux & BSD on some of the oldest
crap systems around, and they ran great.
I would rather become a garbage man than migrate anything to M$ windoz! :)
</i>

His reply was:

<i>
Irish,
I have little doubt that someone could make this boiler software run on
Linux or BSD.  The problem then becomes an issue of getting support from
the maker of the boiler software.  They are the ones insisting we use QNX
or "upgrade" to MS 2000 Professional.  And this is not software you can
just run out of the box.  We need the maker's support to make changes,
etc.
They claim QNX is a "real-time" OS.  Is Linux and/or BSD?
Greg
</i>


That is all so far. Now for some questions for my fellow LUGers:

-What is this QNX? I assume another *nix flavor?

-What the hell are they talking about regarding  a "real-time" OS?

-Any recommendations for this fellow, or should I say for whenever we get
stuck in this same position?

-Comments?



Irish

-- 
A: No.
Q: Should I include e-mail quotations after my reply?