Steve Ashcraft wrote:
> I'd love to hear some opinions about how DOS handles interrupts and if
> there is a problem there that is unacceptable.
The business of how MS-DOS or MS-Windows handles interrupts can be
completely obviated by using a separate, intelligent card to do the
timing. I'm sure such things exist, but I unfortunately cannot provide
any pointers at this time. Perhaps someone else can?
I wonder if John Carriere or any of the other standalone timer folks
might be interested in developing such a card specifically for
autocross timing applications. That would be a good way to hedge
against the trend towards computer-based timing systems.
In any case, since any decent software will be written either for MS-DOS
or Win32 these days (sigh), it would be rash to rely on the PC or the
OS to do the timing. You must use an external timer, or one provided on
a card.
The dedicated hardware can read the signals from the timer heads in
real time, and mark them with a timestamp, completely independent of
the PC's timer system or the OS's interrupt handler.
Mark
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