MicroOS in layman's terms (i dn write this/done by Tinroad?):
Electronic machines understand only one thing and that's electric pulse 'on' and electric pulse 'off'. That's called 'machine language' and is digitally represented by 0s and 1s. When one presses an alphanumeric key, it sends a set of 0s and 1s to a next level operating system (like DOS) which gives a command to the machine to do an action (such as print a letter to the monitor).
The next layer of operating system runs on top of DOS and makes things more user friendly, such as Windows, CE or Mac OS, which are graphical user interfaces (icon representation). These are what the general public thinks of as operating systems. These systems have become quite bulky, and in their complexity create many conflicts with the vast number of applications available today.
Enter a new operating system: Edig's Micro OS which is directly compatible with MS-DOS. Micro OS is written in a programming language called 'C' that is highly flexible and already widely used for text, image and voice applications. Its compact size (about 6Kbytes) makes it ideal for handheld devices, which may include music players, still/video cameras, telephony, etc. Its duty, if you will, is to act as a flexible general file management system. It is particulary well-suited for the smaller footprint storage products such as flash memory and microdisks, but is fully capable for standard IDE hard drives as well, and also is not limited in the number or files it can manage (a drawback inherent in DOS).
The emerging products, for this example, will use a flash memory chip (about the size of a postage stamp) for storage. One flash chip can be used for multiple purposes... just like a floppy disk can be used for a computer and a Sony Mavica camera. This chip, which is re-writeable, will need an operating system that can function with voice, image, text and so on in a universal, flexible way and that can also support other TASK SPECIFIC operating systems.
This is where systems like Jini or Epoc (etc.) operating systems come in. These systems can be layered with the base file management operating system (such as our multi-patented Micro OS). They are not competitors.
Digital signal processors (DSPs) are like railroad switching stations that relay varied signals, for example directing voice to one channel, streaming images to another and so on. The DSPs are especially worth looking at when speed enhancements are announced. A noteworthy new DSP from Texas Instruments is reprogrammable via software, to allow it to adapt to evolving systems for file compression and encryption.
In summary, there are hundreds, thousands of integral layers which make up the complex products for the electronic markets of today. Most are based on old and slow, bulky systems. What is emerging are lean & mean wireless machines, capable of multi-tasking at far greater rates which require a flexible file management operating system.
AI
