Ada on the 1750a (was Re: is Ada dying?)

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Version of the processor"? Dunno. Not sure what you are asking. We were
using a RAD-Hard Plessey chip and the time frame was mid-to-late 90's that
the project was ongoing. This was just about the time that Plessey was
seriously threatening to stop making the RAD-hard 1750a. (I think they
finally did, but it was after our project had been shut down. Some guy named
"Captain Willard" came sailing up the river on a patrol boat and shut down
the whole operation... Very strange... :-)

The compiler (in case anyone was wondering) was the XD-Ada compiler hosted
on DEC machines. We evaluated a number of 1750a-target compilers and this
one produced the best code (and pay REAL close attention here!!!) FOR THE
APPLICATION WE HAD. (All the compilers were good at some things and poor at
others and for the kinds of high-use algorithms we had, XD did the best
job.) Avionics-quality compilers are rare and valuable things!

If I had it to do all over again, I doubt we would really need anything that
was in Ada95 - except for the possible maturity level of the language
meaning better implementation of some features. *Maybe* we could have made
use of Protected objects to eliminate the handful of hand-coded semaphores
we built to shield some shared data. I would also have liked to see if we
could have used the "delay until" construct to do our time scheduling rather
than having disabled all the clocks & using a 1.024ms interrupt to drive the
whole thing. Modular types would have saved us a little trouble too. Much
beyond that, I don't think Ada95 would have offered us significant new
features.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/

"John McCabe" <john.mccabe@emrad.com.nospam> wrote in message
news:3bc55b1a.3036135@news.demon.co.uk...
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2001 09:38:07 -0400, "Marin David Condic"
> <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote:
>
> I'm sure I discussed this with you a lonog time ago, but what version
> of the processor did you use?
>