Specialised real-time applications can be run on an Apple Macintosh II-based platform, according to one year old San Diego based Golden Triangle Computers Inc. The unfortunately-named company – for most people who keep up with their current affairs, the Golden Triangle is the notorious opium-growing area on the borders of Thailand, Burma and Laos, which is surely not an association the company wants to leave in peoples’ minds – has recently released its GT/X real-time operating system implementation of VxWorks, developed by Wind River Systems, which runs in conjunction with its FirePower Mac co-processor. GT/X is closely integrated with Apple Computer’s A/UX implementation of Unix on the Mac, and has been ported to the FirePower NuBus-based masterslave co-processor, which has a 25MHz 68020 processor, optional co-processor, 1Mb or 4Mb memory, much faster SCSI, and two AppleTalk-compatible serial ports. GT/X communicates with A/UX as a remote process using TCP/IP over the NuBus. Applications are developed under A/UX as unlinked modules, downloaded to GT/X, then dynamically linked using GT/X as a debugging environment. The company also offers Apple’s own MR DOS, Macintosh Real-time Disk Operating System, and the Unix-like UniFLEX operating system, which comes from Technical Systems Consultants.
