THE BLOOD OF JESUS-IS-GREATER THAN ALL-ALL-ALL MANKINDS-SINS!!! some get it NOW--others will GET IT-IN ETERNITY!! *THIS IS THE TRUE GOSPEL!!! ALL died in adam---ALL will be restored IN CHRIST!! ***WHO can fathom GODS -LOVE??? some will be in dum-dum school-a long-time! sorta a TIME OUT for hardheads!! kinda like detention-center-til G.I. ME I,M GOIN FOR THE GOLD!! SIMPLY TRUSTING HIS LOVE!!

-- TEMPORARY-SINNER!! (PUPPIES@ZIANET.COM), October 13, 2000

Answers

to put it bluntly!! for ALL those misguided preachers,that preach a false GOD SPEL--kiss my grits!!! your doing the work of satan-dummy!! JESUS DIED FOR ALL-ALL-ALL!! wether they G.I. or not. the TRUE-GOSPEL IS GOOD NEWS--NOT BAD NEWS!! mankind was created in GODS image--we lost it for awhile!! but HE,LL GIVE IT BACK!!

-- not-religious! (dogs@zianet.com), October 13, 2000.

Hey, I like his point that we'll all be saved eventually. So, hell, life is short. Let's party like it's 1999 (or whatever), lead the most dissolute life we can, and worry about salvation after we're dead.

Personally, my theory on salvation is based on my experiences as an attorney and on history. There are what -- about 300 religions in the world? And, why is that relevant -- because most gods do not mind an unbeliever (thinking of them as potential converts), but ALL gods dislike one who worship what they consider a "false god." Thus, if you get religion now, the odds are about 300 to 1 against you; youll die and find yourself confronted by some large annoyed deity who wants to know why you didnt believe in BAHALL or whomever the f*ck he is.

So, with Als encouragement, Ill just stay neutral in this lifetime. When I die, Ill look around and then figure out which deity to believe in. At that point, it should be a simple choice  Ill believe in whomever is standing there telling me that bad things will happen if I dont believe in him or her.

-- E.H. Porter (Just Wondering@about.it), October 13, 2000.

Meanwhile, maybe I should start submitting new threads dealing with the various ways hardware and software handle asynchronous interrupts. Just as topical, and I personally would find it a *lot* more interesting.

Just as a starter, I simply must mention that some systems support multiple IRQ priorities in hardware, while in others the software must prioritize. Where hardware IRQ priorities are supported, some CPU's support this internally, while others rely on supporting logic external to the CPU.

Stay tuned for the various ways IRQs are clocked into the system...

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 13, 2000.

Well TEMPORARY, you got a piece of it. But there's a whole lot more. I'll give you a taste.

We like god are spirits. Spirit has three capacities: knowing, desiring, and willing/choosing. We like god make choices based on our desire.

There are only two desires: self-for-self and self-for-others. Way back before the beginning, God chose his desire. He chose self- for-others (the Cross is at the heart of this desire). Then out of that desire He begot His Son. And the Holy Spirit proceeded from them.

It wasn't enough for god to jsut love himself. He needed more. So came the angels. His best angel, Lucifer got so into himself that he wanted to be like God. He took the desire self-for-self. the two desires are opposite and cannot exist together. So lucifer, now Satan, had to leave God's presence.

Then God created the universe and us. Adam and Eve were created with the ability to choose their desire. God did not tell them about the choice, He only said "don't eat of the tree". Satan came and tempted them to be like God, to choose self-for-self as he had done. They did and the desire of self-for-self became their desire. They, and us, by inheritance became tools of Satan.

You can see that the power in the world is self-for-self. Its sespecially clear in advertising, "You deserve a break today..." Satran is the god of the air and controls the media.

There is a spiritual law: when the body dies the spirit leaves. Christ on the cross took the sin of mankind, satan, into himself. Then He died and Satan had to leave him; when we accept Jesus as our savior, his death is appropriated to us and satan's power over our spirits is broken - we can choose the desire of God, self-for- others

-- John Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), October 13, 2000.

With regard to your willingness to explain how "hardware and software handle asynchronous interrupts" -- go for it! I use the Win98 platform, which seems to have less problems than earlier Windows software. I would enjoy hearing your explaination as it relates to this platform.

But, please, be kind -- no links to web sites which may (or may not) answer the question.

-- E.H. Porter (Just Wondering@about.it), October 13, 2000.

This would require whole books. But let's start at the beginning.

The Intel CPUs (now) have 3 interrupt pins - NMI, SMI, and INTR. NMI is non-maskable interrupt, and those systems that use it at all typically tie it to fatal hardware errors like memory failure. SMI is system management interrupt, *intended* to be used for power management (turning off power to stuff not being used). SMI requires a book all by itself. Finally, INTR is used for requests for service by devices in the system -- timers, drives, keyboards, mice, networks, etc.

There are 16 levels (priorities) of request for device service, numbered 0 (highest priority) through 15 (which is NOT the lowest priority - 7 is!). By priority, we're really talking about whether one devices can interrupt the interrupt servicing another device at the time. If a lower priority interrupt comes in and the CPU is servicing it, the CPU can be interrupted by a higher priority interrupt but not vice versa. When the higher priority interrupt is finished, control returns to the interrupted lower-priority interrupt handler. Clear?

By convention, some of these 16 interrupts have dedicated purposes. IRQ level 0, 1, 2, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, and 15 are generally assigned to a timer (0), keyboard (1), second controller (2), floppy (6), alarm (8), mouse (12), math coprocessor (13), and 2 hard drives (14). A third hard drive (or fourth) would use IRQ15. IRQ levels 8-15 are in the second controller, which is chained to the first controller via IRQ2. From the priority viewpoint, the entire second controller has priority 2, so the actual priority levels are 0, 1, 8-15, 3-7.

The system BIOS tells Windows 98 which IRQs are reserved, which are assigned to what, which ones can be reassigned or are unassigned, and of those that CAN be assigned, which ones the hardware supports assignment to. All this communication is becoming more sophisticated all the time, allowing Microsoft great flexibility in assigning IRQs to devices to avoid conflicts. The hardware has helped a lot too, because PCI IRQs can be shared by multiple devices, whereas ISA IRQs could not.

Finally, some hardware allows a single IRQ to be chained (SCSI was an early case, USB is common today) to provide more flexibility. Anyway, this is a very quick overview, guaranteed to be impenetrable.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 13, 2000.

Jesus Christ it's hot down here!!!

-- Nikoli Krushev (doomsday@y2000.com), October 14, 2000.

I get it. Jesus is like unto a non-maskable interrupt. Satan has a lower IRQ priority and cannot interrupt Jesus.

-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), October 14, 2000.

Al, have you just begun subscribing to universalism, or have I just not noticed it before?

-- butt nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), October 14, 2000.

Flint -- believe it or not, that was actually interesting. One of the things I like about Win95 and later versions is that they seem to handle IRQ conflicts better. I can remember struggling with a lot of jumpers back in the old days.

On the other hand -- how WIN handles IRQs seems to me more like magic or randonm chance than science. Sometimes it seems that if something doesn't work, the solution is to keep reinstalling and deinstalling things until it does. I remember trying to add a second and third parallel port (in the days before USB); about 5 installs and WIN finally "got it."

-- E.H. Porter (Just Wondering@about.it), October 14, 2000.

Flint, have you just begun subscribing to the 8 level switch-IRZ- relay winsock switch theory, or have I just never noticed it before?

-- butt nugget (catsbutt@umailme.com), October 14, 2000.

E.H.

There are several reasons for this. First, more and more devices are migrating to the PCI bus, where interrupts can be shared between devices. Second, more and more devices support plug and play, meaning their IRQs can be reprogrammed by software to whatever might be available (within device-defined limits). So an old ISA parallel port was IRQ7, take that. More expensive ISA parallel ports had a jumper, and you could select IRQ 7 or 5. New PnP parallel ports accept any IRQ except the "magic" ones (0,1,2,8,13).

We still have a ways to go with our IRQ assignment algorithm. Right now, our algorithm is very simplistic. We snag the first device, assign him the first IRQ on his list, and go on to the next device. With multiple devices to be assigned, we are soon painted into a corner. Let's say the FOURTH device we look only allows 2 possible IRQs, and both are already assigned. Bummer.

Windows is getting smarter about this, but not much. Now Windows 98 SE and ME will reiterate -- go back to the beginning, put that first device on the SECOND IRQ on his list, and see if we reach the end of the device list. If not, try again with a different order, etc. It turns out that making a map of every IRQ each device can support and then making assignments from this "pool" so everyone gets an IRQ he can live with is a nontrivial problem. Kind of like the old traveling salesman problem, easy to describe but hard to solve in any reasonable time.

So Windows lets the user remove and reinstall devices through the device manager, and if the user is good at topography, he can find the solution.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), October 14, 2000.