Subject: Re: Re[2]: [linux-audio-dev] Reverse-engineering files
From: David Olofson (david_AT_gardena.net)
Date: Sat Dec 02 2000 - 05:23:29 EET
On Friday 01 December 2000 15:14, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
> >I wonder if that new Mackie hard disk recorder, for example, is
> > running Linux inside? Why not?
>
> I think I can say with fair conviction that it is not. It runs the
> same OS as the Digital 8 Bus, which they call MackieOS. I don't
> believe Mackie when they give the impression that they wrote their
> own OS from scratch. I suspect they bought source from somewhere,
> but it is definitely not Linux, at least as far as this
> kernel-hacker-who-has-
> sat-in-front-of-those-systems-while-they-boot can tell.
>
> Also, its not that clear that even one of the embedded versions of
> Linux meets any of the standards for preemptability/latency that we
> have discussed so much here. If *I* was designing the D8B or the
> HDR24/96, I would probably start with Linux, but thats because I
> know enough about unix kernels and linux in particular to hack it
> to pieces. I very very much doubt that Mackie had that kind of
> knowledge around for MackieOS. I could be wrong though.
My impression is that these mixers do the actual signal processing in
lots of "small" DSPs, while the part of MackieOS that runs on the
"computer" part of the design is little more than a base for the UI.
Thus, it's not certain that MackieOS is playing in the sub 3 ms range
hard RT league at all.
However, I don't even own a Mackie, and I've certainly not tried to
reverse engineer one, so this is just based on what I found on their
web site when the D8B was released, and some general knowledge of
hardware design.
//David
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