[fpc-pascal] spin_lock

[Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho]

On 5/30/06, Alain Michaud <Alain.Michaud at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca> wrote:
>  The problem: the problem is: even if the timing is not so critical and
> the the experiment does not last for long, once it has started then the
> processor should not leave and go answer the phone for another
> process... I think that most process can be delayed for 200ms but my
> acquisition loop should NOT be interrupted while it is doing its thing.

0.1 miliseconds is a lot of time for a modern computer. My experience
is that even running on a graphical environment with other processes
running, you can get 0.1 milisecond precision without trouble.

In fact you can get much more precision then that. I managed to create
a oscilloscope GUI with Lazarus (the hardware is a ISA board I created
myself) and I can acquire information from the board with microsecond
resolution on windows and linux running X11. So I would say that you
only need device driver tricks or a real time os for extreme
precision, like nanoseconds.

In case you want to take a look here you can find documentation,
source code and screenshots:

http://eletronicalivre.incubadora.fapesp.br/portal/english/oscilloscope/

-- 
Felipe Monteiro de Carvalho