Well don't end it there ...Originally Posted by LinkMTech
It's probably that you're "not seeing enough into it".
Interrupts can definitely be used to make multiple things happen at the same time.
It's just that those things need to be happening in hardware.
If you want to send RS232 from an interrupt, then you should use the USART.
If you want to have an interrupt driven PAUSE, then use a Timer.
Jumping to the ISR and executing a software routine like serout(2) is not normally very productive, because the same routine could have been run from the main program without interrupts without much additional overhead. And since either way ... the program can't continue until the serout has completed, with or without interrupts makes little difference.
But if that interrupt uses the hardware USART, only a few instructions need to be executed to start the USART sending data, then it immediately returns from the interrupt and continues running the main program at the same time that the USART is sending the data.
There are several hardware peripherals on the various PIC's, and you might have 5 or 6 things all happening at the same time.
While software timed, bit-bang routines in your interrupts will occasionally be very useful ... avoid them at all cost.
Hardware and Interrupts make good companions.
hth,
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