Running uCOS-II with Microsoft Windows Vista in 1 Hour

uCOS-II the Real-Time Kernel

uCOS-II is a small, yet powerful real-time operating system developed by Jean J. Labrosse and described in his book "MicroC/OS-II - The Real-Time-Kernel", Second Edition, published by CMP Books. The operating system is highly CPU independent and has been ported to numerous microprocessor platforms. The source code as provided together with the book and via the web site may be freely used for non-commercial applications and educational purposes. Licenses for commercial use are available too.

uCOS-II x86 Win32 Simulation

Win32 port allows uCOS-II to run under Microsoft Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, and XP. The port relies on Windows' process and thread management features; the uCOS-II Win32 port does not turn Windows into a real-time operating system! It was developed for didactic purposes to teach the basics of real-time operating systems with an insight to OS internal implementation. This approach was chosen, because it is much easier access PCs rather than to proprietary embedded systems. Powerful PC-based development tools like Microsoft Visual Studio or Cygwin's GCC are available free of charge under appropriate university licenses or GPL as compared to costly embedded system cross-compilers and debuggers. Thus real-time system mechanisms can be studied with uCOS-II under Win32 providing a soft real-time-environment on PCs. If the basic functionality of the application is working correctly, the application can be easily ported to an embedded system later in the lab.

Figure 1 shows the relationship between the user application, uCOS-II the underlying Windows system.

Figure 1: Application / uCOS-II / Windows Vista Relationship

As a result of this hierarchy, µC/OS-II tasks are really Windows threads and their stacks are converted to Windows thread stacks. The system ticker is driven by the high resolution multi-media timer if WIN_MM_TICK is defined in os_cpu_c.c. Otherwise it is driven by sleep(), the system coarse timer. A more realistic real-time effect can be achieved by using the multi-media timer since it has finer granularity (1ms) than the system coarse timer.

Critical sections are implemented using the Win32 API.

Fortunately, the underlying architecture is transparent to the application programmer and all µC/OS-II application code can utilize various features using tradiational documented µC/OS-II function calls.

Since µC/OS-II is an infinite loop by nature, it should be noted that the processor utilization under windows will remain close to 100% while µC/OS-II is running. This is normal operating behavior for infinite loop consol based programs under Windows.

uCOS-II Win32 Simulation with Windows Vista

Most of the previous tests of the Win32 ports were never done, until writing this document, with Windows Vista. In this document, I will show how you can run a Win32 port used with Windows XP under Windows Vista.

To build this tutorial on your own, you need to download:

1. uCOS-II source code V2.86 from here

2. uCOS-II Win32 port from here

3. Open Watcom C-C++ 1.8 from here

Steps to Build the Tutorial

1. Install the Open Watcom C-C++ under the C drive

2. Extract uCOS-II source code and Win32 port

3. Build the following directory structure:

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_cfg_r.h

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_core.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_dbg_r.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_flag.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_mbox.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_mem.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_mutex.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_q.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_sem.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_task.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_time.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\os_tmr.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\ucos-ii.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Source\ucos-ii.h

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Ports\Win32\os_cpu.h

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Ports\Win32\os_cpu_c.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Ports\Win32\os_trace.c

C:\Micrium\Software\uCOS-II\Ports\Win32\os_trace.h

C:\Micrium\Software\EvalBoards\Microsoft\WindowsVista\OpenWatcomC-C++1.8\Ex1-OS\app.c

C:\Micrium\Software\EvalBoards\Microsoft\WindowsVista\OpenWatcomC-C++1.8\Ex1-OS\app_cfg.h

C:\Micrium\Software\EvalBoards\Microsoft\WindowsVista\OpenWatcomC-C++1.8\Ex1-OS\includes.h

C:\Micrium\Software\EvalBoards\Microsoft\WindowsVista\OpenWatcomC-C++1.8\Ex1-OS \os_cfg.h

The first 3 file are copied from the application files found in the directories of Visual Studio 6 under Windows XP while the last file is copied from os_cfg_r.h and just renamed.

4. Make the following changes in the source:

a. In os_cfg.h, change OS_TMR_EN to 0

b. In app.c, change OS_IDLE_PRIO and OS_STAT_PRIO to OS_TASK_IDLE_PRIO and OS_TASK_STAT_PRIO respectively

5. Under the EX1-OS, create a new project using the Open Watcom IDE. The target should be a Win32 character mode executable.

6. After the project creation of the project, add the following sources as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Open Watcom C-C++ 1.8 Project Structure

7. Under Options>C Compiler Switches>File Options Switches>Include directories>, modify the text box be "$(%watcom)/h;$(%watcom)/h/nt;.;../../../../../uCOS-II/Source;../../../../../uCOS-II/Ports/WIN32".

8. Under Options>Windows Linking Switches>Import, Export and Library Switches>Libraries>, modify the text box to be "winmm".

9. Click Make All, the tutorial should compile error free.

10. Click Run, you should get the output shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: uCOS-II for Windows Vista