ABSTRACT
Anyway, the current situation with Windows is that applications run at level 3, least privileged. Unfortunately, this seriously
hampers my style, if I want to do my own I/O. If my requirement is direct access to memory and I/O ports or interrupt handling, invariably, the problem with Windows comes down to lack of speed and unpredictability of response times. A hardware interrupt will quite literally propogate through hundreds of instructions before it reaches your application. Then there is the general issue of the protected environment: you may want to access a particular I/O port or memory location, but the operating system may prevent access. You may want to tweak the system hardware or operating system in some way but not be allowed to.
