Vxworks 5.4.2 May 2026

Here’s a social/tech post about , written as if for a retro embedded engineering community (e.g., LinkedIn, Reddit, or a blog). Pick the tone you need. Option 1: Nostalgic / “War Story” (Reddit or Blog) Title: VxWorks 5.4.2 – where a stray pointer meant rebooting a $50k machine

#vxworks #realtimesystems #embedded #retrocomputing 🕰️ Throwback: VxWorks 5.4.2 (circa early 2000s)

Just fired up an old project image from the early 2000s – , Tornado 2.2, and a Pentium-based SBC. vxworks 5.4.2

-> ld < myPatch.o -> symFindByName "oldFunc", &pOld -> symFindByName "newFunc", &pNew -> pOld = pNew No reboot. No downtime. That’s power – and danger.

No MMU protection. No POSIX threads. But deterministic scheduling you could bet a Mars rover on. Here’s a social/tech post about , written as

Still running in some places where “if it ain’t broke, don’t update the BSP.”

Who else here survived the 5.x era? Bonus points if you used and thought it was magic. -&gt; ld &lt; myPatch

#VxWorks #Embedded #RealTimeKernel