Continuous pulse train generation on my PCI 6602 takes up too much of my system resources.

[Engineering Services]

I am using a PCI 6602 to generate a clock signal that is to synchronize pattern generation on two PCI 6534's. I have done this by generating a pulse train at a user defined frequency on the PCI 6602. My problem is when I generate this pulse train, the program uses all of the computer's CPU, and slows the rest of the processes down. Just to let you know, I have isolated this program to ensure it is the only thing running, and it still has the same result. The CPU usage soars to 100%(and remains constant) and the memory consumption increases (and remains constant) as well. Also, if it helps at all, the CPU consumption is completely independent of the frequency that is being gene
rated, but the memory usage increases a little with an increase in frequency. Does anyone have any insite as to how to fix this, for I have noticed that all of the posted examples like this behave in the same manner.
Thanks,
Dave

[Russell]

This is really strange. I cannot reproduce this. (My CPU consumption is around 4%.) I am using the "Generate Pulse Train (NI-TIO).vi" shipping example on a 6602. Are you able to verify this on another computer?

Russell

[Engineering Services]

Russell,
Thanks for the reply. Just about five minutes ago I came to the realization that the card itself was not causing this to happen. When I took a closer look, I found that my C program and all of the example programs were using the NIDAQWaitForKey() function to enable countinuous generation. So what was happening was that function was constantly polling the CPU to find a key to be pressed. So lets just say I found a way around this problem, and so everything is well. There are a handfull of things that i need to work on now, but at least I know my clock generation program is correct and I can stop banging my head against a wall trying to solve a problem that does not exist and for which there is no solution.
Thanks Again,
Dave

[Russell]

Haha! That's great! I'm glad you found it.

-Russell