high priority jobs?

[Richard J. Bookman]

Question: Can I run a job with such a priority that it will correctly
detect an event every 33milliseconds? (The actual acceptable performance
is to miss NO event in 17 seconds enough of the time, i.e., most (>50%) of
the 17 second trials should report NO missing events.)

Background: I have a 3/260, running 4.0.1, with no other users but with a
reasonable collection of daemons. A NICE PC!!!!  A frame grabber is
sitting in an externable VME box grabbing incoming video from my
microscope. I want to count the number of elapsed frames from a START
signal. I am (or can be) root. I have no one else to worry about. If need
be I can shut down every other process. I do not want to use interrupts
(don't ask)...  I just want to sit there polling this register.
Renice-ing (-20) did not seem to help (at least from within Sunview); I
have the impression that something is starting to trip over its own feet
as the shelltool starts to behave strangely.  Using setpriority(,,-20) and
chmod +s did NOT improve things; in fact, it seems to have made them
worse.

Solutions and kibbitzing will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Dr. Richard J. Bookman
Department of Physiology		internet:rb at chroma.med.upenn.edu
University of Pennsylvania		phone   :215-898-9555
Philadelphia, PA., 19104-6085