jiffy_delta

[jwantz at babel.hpcc.noaa.gov]

Scott, I don't believe anyone answered your question about jiffy_delta.  A 
jiffy as I understand it is like an interrupt generated by the kernel, 
kind of like the old dos timer interrupt.  If you recall on a DOS machine 
you could lock up the system if you tried installing an interrupt handler 
that took too long to execute.  On linux it is even worse, you can trash 
your file system because in the lock up process you run the risk of losing 
things like the super block!

Now to answer your question, the jiffy_delta is found in 
/proc/speakup/your_synthesizer.  In my case it is in 
/proc/speakup/doubletalk_pc, because I am running a doubletalk pc.  
Presumably, jiffy_delta controls how often speakup tries to insert itself 
in the running kernel measured in jiffies of course.  Incidentally, in 
Redhat 8.0 they recently increased the speed of the kernel by an order of 
magnitude.  This is of course more CPU intensive, but it improves the 
performance of realtime applications.

Kirk, please correct me if I am wrong about jiffy_delta.

     Jim Wantz WB0TFK