QNX Archive

Zinzala is an SDK by Jean-Louis Villecroze (BeOS users will remember JLV from his Squirrel interpreter while QNX users probably are already using his apps) designed to take full advantage of modern computers and operating systems, such as QNX. It offers: Object oriented framework (in C++) , multi-threaded, network-ready application, easy inter-application messaging, multi-threaded, message passing, Photon based GUI kit (fully scriptable).

The non-commerical (NC) download of QNX 6.2.1 has offically been released today. Commercial developers can also now apply to get an evaluation copy of the pro (PE) edition of QNX. Be sure to use the new 6.2.1 online 3rd Party software repository once you are up and running.

QNX released the much anticipated 6.2.1 version of their QNX Momentics Development Suite (Standard and Professional Editions) at Embedded World in Nuernberg. The non-commercial (NC) version is expected to be released by month end. Press release here.

The newest version of QNX Photon microGUI will enable multi-layered graphical interfaces which allows embedded developers to create sophisticated GUIs that display a mix of static and dynamic content. The multi-layer support will be available in the latest rollout of QNX Neutrino RTOS.

From QNXZone: QNX Software Systems has released the Patch A for all versions of QNX Momentics. There is no readme or changelog available, so the only information available on what is included in the patch is from the short summary on QDN that reads as follows: "It provides enhancements and addresses some of the general issues pertaining to Voyager, Phplay, and Photon microGUI".

Here you can find the latest updates to QNX Momentics. These packages contain software to update your development environment. For the NC version, you would be able to download the PhShutdown and PhLocale Security patches and a Package Filesystem patch.

QNXZone reports that the eQip Project has recently gone open source and it is available via anonymous CVS. The eQip project supports several models of the HP/Compaq iPaq PDA, and rumour has it that the Sharp Zaurus has been running QNX on the test bench. Plenty of screenshots here.

After many months of waiting, QNX RtP (now called QNX Momentics) 6.2 is released. The new version has many fixes, new features and more device driver support. It requires a PIII-650 or better (however, I have successfully ran its beta on a 233 Mhz PC with 64 MB RAM a few months ago), 128MB RAM and 1 GB disk space. QNX Momentics' primary target are embedded developers instead of end users. Please note that QNX 6.2 does not support anymore the FAT32-installed QNX boot image, but instead, it requires its own partition. The ISO available for download is 195 MB. You can read our world exclusive preview of QNX 6.2 we published last January, here.

"In a showdown with Microsoft Windows CE, the QNX RTOS once again defended its position as the most powerful and reliable realtime operating systems for embedded developers. According to a study by Dedicated Systems Experts, the QNX RTOS v6.1 significantly outperformed Windows CE 3.0 in several tests." Read the rest of the press release at QNX.

QNX is an operating system that all of us have used, but few of us realize it when we do. The OS was created in the early 1980's by QNX Software Systems, a Canadian company, but the version we are previewing today (unreleased yet, version 6.2), based on the Neutrino kernel, was pretty much (re)written from scratch some years ago. QNX is used everywhere, from VCRs, to DVDs, to medical machinery and even satellites and space shuttles. Many of you maybe even have tried the old demodisk, a demo of the QNX4 RTOS, plus the previous version of the Photon GUI, fitting in a single 1.44 floppy. The desktop-enhanced version of QNX RtP (free for non-commercial use) runs on almost all modern x86 CPUs, and if we judge from the following screenshots, it looks pretty good for an embedded system OS.

"This report is a real-time performance and robustness evaluation of the QNX v6.1 RTOS from QNX Software Systems Ltd. Aside from the standard performance tests, the test suite has now been expanded with several stress tests. The evaluation report covers the following topics: Theoretical study of the architecture, API, tools, development method, Interrupt Handling, Thread Handling (thread creation, thread switch latency, Synchronization mechanisms (semaphores, mutexes, priority inversion), File system performance, Network stack performance, Advanced Interrupt Handling (two simultaneous interrupts, nested interrupts, maximum sustainable interrupt frequency, ...), Memory leak detection, Real-time performance monitoring with varying system loads." Download the free report at Dedicated-Systems.com.

The latest stable version of XFree86, 4.1.0, was ported to QNX RtP by a small team of developers. The team also ported other tools as well, like a VNC server, Nedit and the LessTiff Gui Toolkit. Get the archives from SourceForge.

The QNX RtP 6.1.0 microkernel (which also runs on PCs) and its Photon micro GUI have been ported to the Compaq PDA solution, the iPaq. The screenshots look very attractive indeed, we just hope that the QNX team add some more software in it, like a Calendar, Contacts or a Todo list which are undoubtly, very useful applications for a PDA.