SCHAUMBURG, Ill. -- Hoping to broaden the use of pagers as the base technology for next-generation communications products, Motorola's Platform Software Division (PSD) has unveiled an operating system that handles many basic functions for compact portable communicators.

Motorola launched the Flex Operating System, part of its Flex software line, alongside the first product to use it, the Motorola PageWriter 2000.

"We're focusing on the OEM market for paging devices, talking to a number of top-tier carriers and technology manufacturers,'' said John O'Neill, wireless client marketing manager at Motorola PSD. "A lot of people have a vision for next-generation handheld devices, but there are questions about whether they'll be phones, computers, TVs or pagers. We're saying people are familiar with pagers, so rather than try to sell them a new, novel device, why not put those applications on a pager? This operating system lets OEMs do that.''

The multitasking OS, developed at an engineering center in Atlanta, provides real-time capabilities in a very small footprint. It can run on systems with at least 256 kbytes of RAM, 512 kbytes of ROM or flash memory, and another 256 kbytes of flash that can be used for application programs. It was designed to run on Motorola's Dragonball CPU, a member of the 68000 processor line.

The operating system works with related products in the Flex family, such as Flex Script, an application authoring language with a tool kit called the Flex Script Integrated Development Environment. Flex Script copies certain concepts from Java.

"Flex Script is essentially a virtual machine; we've done it as an interpretive language," O'Neill said. "In essence, the pager will be a little platform with a virtual machine."

Designers who want to write a messaging application can call functions such as "listen for message, compose a message or compose to screen," he said. "These exist as part of the operating system, so the OS just calls the functions that it needs. Something like 'compose a message' might actually be dozens of actual function calls."

Flex OS also includes power management, a necessity for battery-powered products. O'Neill said a key facet of power conservation is to turn on functions that require power only when they are needed, not on set periods as many do now.

Along with two-way messaging and power control, the operating system has a graphical user interface and a scalable architecture.

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