>Hi,
>        To all the PC programming experts a couple of questions.
>I'm transferring data from a CCD image sensor for display on a PC via the
>parallel port.  Works fine, 8 bit gray scale. 400 x 280 pixels.  I'm using

400*280 = 112E3

you need at least two IO operations to get the data from IO assuming
no hardware handshake == 224E3 operations. A picture should come through
in one second, at most.

>speed up software

Cut your aquisition and display routines up, into parts. Use a tight loop
to read data (preferrably written in assembly and linked into your
project) into an array and then display it later. I don't know about
Delphi but for high speed aquisition and display usually one investigates
the exact nature of the visual window (the image displayed) and converts
the array of data on the fly (by manipulating the aquisition code) to
that, then displays it using native functions, as a stored image (not
plotting). This is the very rough idea of it. And then you use a profiler
to profile your code until it is not worth profiling anymore.

Plotting is almost always expensive unless you are using a fast plotting
library that uses integer arithmetic and evil shortcuts (like Bresenham
algorythms) to plot directly into the frame store buffer. This requires
direct access to the frame buffer in the first place (like using DirectX
functions under Windows for example, or DGX and other things under X11).

good luck,

Peter

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