The laboratory resources available until 1996 allowed us to offer the real-time instruction within the constraints of "soft" real-time. The implementation platform has been a network of Sun workstations with simulated external sources of data and interrupts. The students worked on a semester long team project collecting requirements, building a requirements and specification document, preparing the design and implementing software capable of acquiring the external data and interrupts, reacting to user input, and gen erating output conforming to pre-defined timing specifications. The design allowed exploration of such topics as intertask communication, device drivers, and interface with the operating system software. The implementation language was Ada with its tasking and run-time libraries fully supporting the course material. Examples of developed projects are a "dog fight" aviation video game, a reconfigurable aircraft instrument panel, and a program for monitoring airport ground traffic from a GPS feed.

During the Fall of 1995 Computer Science department moved into the new Science and Technology Building. The department is operating a Personal Software laboratory (with 60 UNIX workstations for individual work), Team Software laboratory (with 8 workstations for team work), Advanced Systems laboratory (for a research work), and the Real-Time Software to support the hardware course sequence. In addition to digital trainers, microprocessor boards, we use dedicated hardware with real-time operating systems, real-time development tools, and plan to use more real-time data feeds from university aviation equipment (aircraft GPS, avionics, weather, flight simulators).

In the Fall of 1995 the department got an Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement grant from the National Science Fundation. The funding has provided resources to upgrade and re-organize the offerings of the hardware-oriented classes. In the real-time laboratory we have both DOS/Windows (2 stations) and UNIX (2 Sun and 2 IBM workstations) hardware platforms connected on the LAN with the external hardware (VME, data acquisition Industrial Packs) and real-time development software. One Sun workstation is an IPX model with a Powerup CPU chip upgrade, 32 megabytes of memory, color monitor, running Solaris. The other Sun is ICL model runninng SunOS configured as the LAN server for the Real-Time Lab subnet. IBM workstations are RS6000 with 64 megabytes of memory and a color monitor, running AIX. The five Intel workstations have installed Lynx (three units) and QNX (two units) real-time operating systems. We have also iRAT - Real-Time Analysis Toolset, and are in process of securing more data acquisition, control, and simulation software. The Real-Time Laboratory is to support all RT development layers:

  • specification/design tools, code generators, compilers, interface
  • crosscompilers, loaders, debugging and emulating software
  • real-time kernels for host and target systems
  • target computers with diagnostic software running on the host
  • data acquisition/processing boards

We have acquired UNIX based VxWorks real-time development system. It runs from the Sun SunOS workstation connected to the target boards in VME standards. The target boards are Motorola 68040 with WindRiver VxWorks OS. We have also MultiAda - a crossdevelopment environment from Green Hills Software - allowing to develop software in C/Ada for VxWorks targets.

The lab currently is used by the class (formerly CS311, now CEC320) doing experiments with cross-development in assembly with Motorola 68000 boards and external peripheral devices (controllers, switches, displays). Students in (both graduate MSE545, MSE655 and undergraduate CS450) may use the lab to work on their assigned projects. The laboratory is designed to be used for such courses as: Computer Organization, Real-Time Systems, Interfacing, Concurrent and Distributed Computing, Software Safety, Computer Architecture, Networking, etc.

Additionally, in the adjoining Team Software Lab, we have eight RS6000 IBM workstations used primarily for Simulation (MODSIM), Computer Graphics (OpenGL), Software Engineering (Teamwork), and Robotics (ProEngineering) class. In the Team Lab we have installed four Silicon Graphics Indigo Workstations, used jointly with Math Department for visualisation and graphics software.


The concept of usage of the Real-Time lab and the acquisitions under the NSF grant are monitored by Dr. Andrew Kornecki (can be reached at: korn@db.erau.edu). The lab was started by MSE graduate student Daniel Eyassu ( eyassud@db.erau.edu), and is currently administered by Jeremy Chapman ( chapmanj@db.erau.edu ). During the course of semester the Real-Time select graduate MSE and undergraduate CS students have 24-hour access via card reader.