Re: [avrdude-dev] Win 32 port

[Lou Cypher]

On 17 Feb 2004 at 13:46, Jan-Hinnerk Reichert wrote:

> They are used in the CVS-code in usecPerfDelay() in "ppiwin.c". They 
> seem to work very stable. The only problem is, that they might not be 
> available on all hardware.

Maybe it largely depends on the kind of hardware: maybe with NT embedded on a 
PC-104 form factor board, while they should be on any desktop system.

I read, from that second application link I mentioned:
"[...]
September 26, 1996 
  [...]
  Note that QueryPerformanceFrequency will return FALSE if the hardware does 
not support the performance counter. It's unlikely that this will be the case 
in any machine capable of running Windows 95, but I don't know this for a 
fact. You may want to have a fallback routine that uses timeGetTime instead."

If the target is for older systems, it just can use a double methode for 
delays, checking first if that timer exists.
If the system has no reliable delay, under a minimal amount of time (i.e. 
Windows 95 under a heavy load), then it can only be "slow".

In case Sleep() isn't reliable on Windows 2000, maybe you could roll your 
own, using that timeGetTime() and a proper loop -- but if the high-resolution 
timer was "unlikely to not exist" on a a W95 system, it surely is less than 
unlikely to miss in the requirements for a 5 years older O.S., IMHO.

I found this, with Google, on that subject:
  http://lists.wxwindows.org/archive/wx-users/msg22912.html
and it makes sense to me, that pre-Pentium system could have been missing 
that timer (a processor built-in feature), so I would presume that if someone 
dares to install W2K on a '486, well... can just expect it to run *slow*.

Again: if someone is running a desktop on a non-Intel/AMD processor, maybe 
isn't even running any Windows O.S. -- Ok, there's the Alpha, but maybe with 
it there would be many more issues, other than timing, to run avrdude...


Lou