6K TROUBLESHOOTING - COM6SRVR USES 100% OF CPU

If running a 6K under WindowsNT, you may notice that the 6K's Com6srvr uses 100% of CPU resources while idle. The Com6srvr has a thread that continuously polls for data on the communications ports. The thread is active whenever the Com6srvr is active. When the computer is idle, you would normally expect to see the idle process consuming the majority of the CPU power. But when the Com6srvr is active, the idle process consumes a very small amount, while the Com6srvr consumes nearly 100%. Should another process come along that requires use of the CPU, the Com6srvr will relinquish control to the Operating System and thus the new process. The polling thread has a normal priority level and as such will share the CPU with whatever other tasks are using the CPU. Thus, the responsiveness of Motion Planner and other apps should not be compromised in any way. However, using up all of the CPU cycles all of the time might cause laptop batteries to discharge sooner.