Alsys Ada question

Alsys Ada question

[Scott Ingram]

I've inherited a system that was built using 
"DOS Alsys Ada 4.2 for 80X86 and cross." 

In the sources, there is a "with" clause for a
package "Unsigned," which I do not recall being
a standard Ada83 package...so I am presuming that
this package was supplied by Alsys with the compiler.
Can anyone confirm or deny that supposition?

Also, who would I contact to see if that product is
still available?
-- 
Scott Ingram
Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Ted Dennison]

In article <38C53DCC.C89AE4BF@silver.jhuapl.edu>,
  Scott Ingram <scott@silver.jhuapl.edu> wrote:
> I've inherited a system that was built using
> "DOS Alsys Ada 4.2 for 80X86 and cross."
>
> In the sources, there is a "with" clause for a
> package "Unsigned," which I do not recall being
> a standard Ada83 package...so I am presuming that
> this package was supplied by Alsys with the compiler.
> Can anyone confirm or deny that supposition?

You are correct that there is no "Unsigned" package in standard Ada83.
You can check what's in the Ada standard yourself in one of the
various places that it is available online. You should be able
to check what comes with your compiler yourself by looking
through its directories, or flipping through appendix F in its
documentation.

My guess would be that its a package supplying a true 32-bit unsigned
integer type, which the Ada83 standard made it impossible to do
yourself within the language on a 32-bit machine.

However, its also possible that its a package declared inside of another
package that your code has a "use" clause for.

> Also, who would I contact to see if that product is
> still available?

Aonix. http://www.aonix.com

--
T.E.D.

http://www.telepath.com/~dennison/Ted/TED.html


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Re: Alsys Ada question

[Scott Ingram]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> 
> You are correct that there is no "Unsigned" package in standard Ada83.
> You can check what's in the Ada standard yourself in one of the
> various places that it is available online. You should be able

Thanks, Ted.  I had already looked in the old RM, but wanted
make sure I hadn't missed something.

> to check what comes with your compiler yourself by looking
> through its directories, or flipping through appendix F in its
> documentation.

Unfortunately, I don't have the compiler...which is why I am guessing.

> 
> My guess would be that its a package supplying a true 32-bit unsigned
> integer type, which the Ada83 standard made it impossible to do
> yourself within the language on a 32-bit machine.

My thought as well, although it appears that the compiler was only for
16 bit targets.

> 
> However, its also possible that its a package declared inside of another
> package that your code has a "use" clause for.

Wish that were the case.

> 
> > Also, who would I contact to see if that product is
> > still available?
> 
> Aonix. http://www.aonix.com

Thanks again.
-- 
Scott Ingram
Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Richard D Riehle]

In article <38C53DCC.C89AE4BF@silver.jhuapl.edu>,
	Scott Ingram <scott@silver.jhuapl.edu> wrote:

>I've inherited a system that was built using 
>"DOS Alsys Ada 4.2 for 80X86 and cross." 
>
>In the sources, there is a "with" clause for a
>package "Unsigned," which I do not recall being
>a standard Ada83 package...so I am presuming that
>this package was supplied by Alsys with the compiler.
>Can anyone confirm or deny that supposition?

Alsys was one of the compiler publishers intelligent enough
to provide a package Unsigned with its compiler.  I recall the
agony of using compilers that did not support any kind of unsigned
integer under Ada 83.  With Ada 95, you may define your own unsigned
integer type.  So "with Unsigned" is a legal context clause with 
the Alsys 83 compiler.

>Also, who would I contact to see if that product is
>still available?

One would hope that Aonix would support it.  http://www.aonix.com.  However,
there is a question still on the table of how much support anyone can
expect with the recent shakeup at Aonix.  It is not clear that anyone is left
in the organization with knowledge or experience of the Alsys Ada 83 product
line since they dismantled the office in Burlington, MA where most of that
knowledge was concentrated.  

You are probably better off making the transition to an Ada 95 compiler.  It is
upward compatible, in most respects, and will ultimately give you a better, more
maintainable software application.  Whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of
trying to convert the application to C++.  That is an "out of the frying pan and
into the fire" solution.  

Richard Riehle

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Scott Ingram]

Richard D Riehle wrote:

> You are probably better off making the transition to an Ada 95 compiler.  It is
> upward compatible, in most respects, and will ultimately give you a better, more
> maintainable software application.  Whatever you do, don't fall into the trap of
> trying to convert the application to C++.  That is an "out of the frying pan and
> into the fire" solution.
> 
> Richard Riehle

No danger of going the C++ route.  I only learned C because I couldn't
find an
affordable Unix Ada compiler when I switched to Unix for home use ten
years ago :)
And the only maintenance necessary for this embedded system is to
determine the
origin of an unhandled exception.  It may in fact be a hardware fault
not accounted
for in the code, so with luck I may not have to rebuild the sources.
-- 
Scott Ingram
Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Paul Warren]

Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com> writes:

> One would hope that Aonix would support it.  http://www.aonix.com.  However,
> there is a question still on the table of how much support anyone can
> expect with the recent shakeup at Aonix.  It is not clear that anyone is left
> in the organization with knowledge or experience of the Alsys Ada 83 product
> line since they dismantled the office in Burlington, MA where most of that
> knowledge was concentrated.  
> 

I don't believe that we support any of the AdaWorld version 4 products.
We do still support AdaWorld version 5 (well, some of them anyway).  I've
been helping a customer recently to move an application from version
4 to version 5.  We do support "discontinued" products on a special basis
(but this is done at a local level, not globally).

There is still Ada 83 product knowledge in USA and Europe within Aonix,
though I don't know how many read comp.lang.ada.

Cheers,

Paul
-- 
+-----------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Paul Warren  M.Phil,        |                                             |
| Senior Software Consultant, |                                             |
| Aonix Europe Limited,       | email: pwarren@aonix.co.uk                  |
| Henley-on-Thames,           | Tel: 01491 415017                           |
| Oxfordshire  RG9 1EN        | Fax: 01491 571866                           |
+-----------------------------+---------------------------------------------+

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Ed Falis]

"Scott Ingram" <scott@silver.jhuapl.edu> wrote in message
news:38C53DCC.C89AE4BF@silver.jhuapl.edu...
> I've inherited a system that was built using
> "DOS Alsys Ada 4.2 for 80X86 and cross."
>
> In the sources, there is a "with" clause for a
> package "Unsigned," which I do not recall being
> a standard Ada83 package...so I am presuming that
> this package was supplied by Alsys with the compiler.
> Can anyone confirm or deny that supposition?
>
> Also, who would I contact to see if that product is
> still available?

4.2 was superceded in the early 90's, so you're working with old code.  The
last of that line of compilers that directly supported the unsigned package
(if I recall correctly) was the ActivAda cross 386, which was closely
related to the 16 bit compiler for 86/186/286.  That probably bit the dust
in 96-97.  Space Station is still using a variant of it by special contract
with Aonix (last I heard) for the MDM's that were discussed in another
thread.

The contents of that package can be easily replaced by Unsigned_8,
Unsigned_16 and Unsigned_32 in any Ada 95 compiler.  The correspondence is
Byte, Word and Dword from package Unsigned.

You could try contacting Aonix about the compiler.  As Richard suggested,
Ada 95 is more likely the way to go.

- Ed Falis
Former product manager for Alsys X86 products.

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Scott Ingram]

Ed Falis wrote:
> 
> The contents of that package can be easily replaced by Unsigned_8,
> Unsigned_16 and Unsigned_32 in any Ada 95 compiler.  The correspondence is
> Byte, Word and Dword from package Unsigned.

Ah, that was the paragraph I needed...since I wasn't sure of the
correlation between the Alsys Unsigned types and the Ada95 types.
 
> You could try contacting Aonix about the compiler.  As Richard suggested,
> Ada 95 is more likely the way to go.
> 
> - Ed Falis
> Former product manager for Alsys X86 products.

-- 
Scott Ingram
Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Re: Alsys Ada question

[Tony Matthews]

We use Alsys Ada '83 V5.5 for LynxOs/x86 and SCO OpenServer Unix
extensively.
I see from follow-up postings that you have probably got the answer you
wanted.
If there's anything else you want to know, drop me a line and if I can spare
the time I'll be glad to help.

Tony M.

--

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Scott Ingram <scott@silver.jhuapl.edu> wrote in message
news:38C53DCC.C89AE4BF@silver.jhuapl.edu...
> I've inherited a system that was built using
> "DOS Alsys Ada 4.2 for 80X86 and cross."
>
> In the sources, there is a "with" clause for a
> package "Unsigned," which I do not recall being
> a standard Ada83 package...so I am presuming that
> this package was supplied by Alsys with the compiler.
> Can anyone confirm or deny that supposition?
>
> Also, who would I contact to see if that product is
> still available?
> --
> Scott Ingram
> Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory
> Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory