@CHIP-RTOS - General introduction

Short general explanation

The name @CHIP-RTOS is used as the term for the operating system of the IPC@CHIP® (older manuals are still using the term BIOS).   For an overview of the provided features and the general architecture of the operating system see @CHIP-RTOS architecture.

The operating system is able to execute multiple (up to 12) DOS programs simultaneous.   Each program runs as a task of the RTOS kernel.   These 16 bit DOS programs can be created with a variety of development tools.   However, the instruction opcodes in these programs must be confined to the 80186 instruction set.   For C/C++ programming, Beck offers the Paradigm Beck IPC Edition and the Borland 5.02 development environments (see www.beck-ipc.com).

This document describes the Application Programming Interface (API) of the @CHIP-RTOS.   It should be used as a reference manual for IPC@CHIP® application programmers.   For a better understanding of this manual the reader should have some experience in programming DOS applications.

The document explains how to call every provided function of the @CHIP-RTOS from user application programs.   The API of the @CHIP-RTOS is structured into different sections (e.g. HARDWARE API, RTOS API, TCPIP API, ....).   All sections are listed as HTML-links on the main index page of this document.

For every API section the @CHIP-RTOS provides a software interrupt with different function numbers for each API call.   The software interrupt mechanism is the standard way for DOS programs to call internal functions of the operating system (e.g. file operations, reading/printing characters, etc.).

A C-Library is available which provides an efficient interface to the set of underlying @CHIP-RTOS services documented here.   Usage of this Beck C-Library is highly recommended.   Both binary and source for the Beck C-library are provided at our download page, www.beck-ipc.com.   A collection of example programs is also provided, which demonstrate the usage of the API.

Before calling the specified software interrupt, every necessary function parameter must be loaded into the processor registers.   Each API call description details which parameters are required in the registers.   The @CHIP-RTOS uses the parameters from the processor registers and executes the corresponding function.   After the software interrupt execution, some specified processor registers contain the return result(s) from the function.   The meaning of the return result(s) are specified with each API call description.

You will find some useful general notes about programming DOS applications for the IPC@CHIP® under Programming notes.

For some necessary knowledge about hardware details of the IPC@CHIP®, see the hardware manuals available from the download area of www.beck-ipc.com.