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Re: Autocross Timing/Scoring Software

To: "Mark J. Andy" <marka@telerama.com>,
Subject: Re: Autocross Timing/Scoring Software
From: Craig Blome <cblome@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 06:27:23 -0700 (PDT)

--- "Mark J. Andy" <marka@telerama.com> wrote:
> 
> Like you (I think, anyway), I don't have direct
> experience doing realtime
> stuff under windows, but I don't share your optimism
> that a VxD will cure
> the ills...  There's simply too much other stuff
> happening in the OS that
> assumes its not a realtime environment.

Windows' real Achilles heel for real time jobs is that
it is a cooperative system (that is, one task can't
run until the previous one gives up the system).  If
an errant application or device driver disables
interrupts for a long time, there's no way to avoid
dropping timer signals.  It would probably work if you
didn't run other apps at the same time, but "probably"
isn't good enough.

> 
> I do know that NT supplies some real time stuff, but
> I havn't looked at it
> closely enough to know if you can get down to 0.001
> accuracy.
> 

NT at an autocross...the horror, the horror...

Actually Windows CE (their palmtop OS) has some real
time capability that should be accurate enough.  It
was sort of broken in CE 2.12, better in 3.0, but 3.0
is still not in widespread use.

Craig Blome

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