serial port sluggish-ness

  • Thread starter Thread starter Eugene
  • Start date Start date
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Eugene

hello,

I have a sharp digital camera that uses the serial port to upload pictures
to the computer. even tho' it is a lo-rez camera (640x480 - pix are jpg's
about 100k in size), it takes a long, long time to upload the pix (about 20
sec per picture).

it's not so much the time that's an issue, it's the "hogging" of PC
resources. while this laborious downloading is going on, everything else on
the PC works as slow as molasses (i'm using xp.pro on a 1gig hz / 512 M ram
machine).

is there any settings tweak that might let this hungry little app run in the
background or down the priority ladder w.r.t. CPU cycles, or something?

thanks for any advice..

Eugene
 
hello,

I have a sharp digital camera that uses the serial port to upload pictures
to the computer. even tho' it is a lo-rez camera (640x480 - pix are jpg's
about 100k in size), it takes a long, long time to upload the pix (about 20
sec per picture).

it's not so much the time that's an issue, it's the "hogging" of PC
resources. while this laborious downloading is going on, everything else on
the PC works as slow as molasses (i'm using xp.pro on a 1gig hz / 512 M ram
machine).

is there any settings tweak that might let this hungry little app run in the
background or down the priority ladder w.r.t. CPU cycles, or something?

thanks for any advice..

Eugene
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with that camera. Does it have a little disk in it? If
yes, consider using a card reader to transfer your images to the hard
drive.
 
I'm not familiar with that camera. Does it have a little disk in it? If
yes, consider using a card reader to transfer your images to the hard
drive.
Click to expand...

Sharon, the camera (Sharp VL-NZ10) uses a memory chip to store pictures. I
don't think it's the storage medium that limits speed here, it's the
transfer protocol (serial port).

More than speed as an issue, my question had to do with tweaks that might
force this utility to work in the "background" with "unused" CPU time, etc,
rather than hogging mainstream CPU resources..


Eugene
 
Sharon, the camera (Sharp VL-NZ10) uses a memory chip to store pictures. I
don't think it's the storage medium that limits speed here, it's the
transfer protocol (serial port).

More than speed as an issue, my question had to do with tweaks that might
force this utility to work in the "background" with "unused" CPU time, etc,
rather than hogging mainstream CPU resources..

Eugene
Click to expand...

I think you're right that it's the transfer method that is slow too. That's
why I suggested looking into an alternative method. :)

If the images are transferred via a small utlity that will show up in Task
Manager, go to the Processes page, right click on that program and use Set
Priority.
 
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