Re: [buildcheapeeg] Re: File Formats

From: Doug Sutherland (wearable_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 2002-03-04 21:16:49


Jim,

> I worked quite hard to preserve the raw data including using
> a machine code assembly language Bios driven interrupt service
> routine.

A lot has changed since the DOS and 386 days. You can't really
make these things intterupt driven in windows or linux because
they are multitasking apps. The bus standards (IDE) and drives
are better and faster now too. I don't know many people who do
bios level disk access these days. All of these other EEG
programs like Brainmaster, Biograph, and countless others are
using OS level services. If you need to go into single tasking
mode for speed, then maybe the program is not architected very
well, by today's standards. There are ways to force windows
into single tasking (booting only at DOS level), and there
are ways to do the same in linux, but most people won't be
very happy with that. Before we argue any further on this I
suggest that we try it. There is only one way to find out
for sure, verytical prototyping.

> If my programmer did not trust DOS he certainly would not
> trust Windows.

Never trust a programmer <grin>

> Working with a 386 processor was quite a challenge to get
> everything done in time. Just because we now have these
> super fast processors, I do not think you are out of the
> woods.

There are countless EEG apps that are NOT using bios level
disk access and are NOT operating in single tasking mode.

> Dave tells me that he cannot use the FFT waterfall display
> supplied with his EEG machine because it is way too slow.

This is a different issue, and perhaps we should keep this
in mind, making sure we make the code lean and mean.

> I am not a software guru, but I do know when something
> works and when it is too slow. I remember that writing
> to the screen took so long that I had to write in the
> background and then switch active pages. I would guess
> this is still a problem (now a days) ...

An engineer guessing?

Namaste,
Doug



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