Am Sonntag, dem 29. Okt 2017 schrieb Mateusz Viste:
> On Sat, 28 Oct 2017 21:56:22 +0200, Andreas K. Foerster wrote:
> > The old version did a "busy-waiting". That was bad, when you run it on
> > top of a multi-tasking system in an emulator. It waists cpu-cycles.
>
> Even on a single-user DOS it is bad: increased power consumption, heat,
> less battery time...
Oh, I always was aware of that. I was only struggeling with finding
a good solution.
> > The new version makes use of the hlt instruction.
>
> Not good either. You should rather issue a proper 'idle' int and let the
> task scheduler or power manager do its job.
"task scheduler"? "power manager"? There must be a misunderstanding
somewhere. I am talking only about the DOS version.
The hlt instruction is only used when you compile the DOS program
with bcc ("row4t.com"). The ports to other systems use other
system-specific APIs for the user interface. (Even the code for DJGPP
is different.)
To me DOS is a single-tasking system and I treat it like that. When you
run the DOS program on top of a multi-tasking system, you run it in a
virtualized or emulated machine. So the hlt instruction only pauses the
virtualized cpu, not the real one. It shouldn't affect the rest of
the system.
I am aware that there are some TSR-programs that might not work with
that, but that has always been a problem with games, if I remember
correctly.
--
AKFoerster <https://AKFoerster.de/>
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