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Deactivating interrupts and hard-coded tight loops are both definite no-nos for real-time systems. This seems to be eluding to "racing-the-beam" applications and other tight synchronisation to video timing techniques, mainly used in the home computer demo scene. While those techniques are definitly closely dependant on timing, they are basically the opposite of a real-time system - as they hog the CPU for quite a long time for one single task, like busy-waiting until the CRT beam reaches some definite position. This indeed does rely on low interrupt latency, but also heavily increases latency for anything else. Nonwithstanding that, there is no reason you couldn't do the same thing on an x86-based computer (maybe not the IBM PC, again because of its architecture)

Deactivating interrupts and hard-coded tight loops are both definite no-nos for real-time systems. This seems to be alluding to "racing-the-beam" applications and other tight synchronisation to video timing techniques, mainly used in the home computer demo scene. While those techniques are definitly closely dependant on timing, they are basically the opposite of a real-time system - as they hog the CPU for quite a long time for one single task, like busy-waiting until the CRT beam reaches some definite position. This indeed does rely on low interrupt latency, but also heavily increases latency for anything else. Nonwithstanding that, there is no reason you couldn't do the same thing on an x86-based computer (maybe not the IBM PC, again because of its architecture)

Wikipedia seems to have realized that and warns you with a "largely unverified" banner. So, take it with a grain of salt or two.

Wikipedia seems to have realized that and warns you with a "largely unverified" banner. So, take it with a grain of salt (or, rather, a spoonful).

MS Windows didn't help much as well, so it was out of the question for running realtime applications - But there were (and are) quite some real-time OS for x86, like QNX, and there are even real-time Linux derivates for x86 CPUs.

MS Windows didn't help much as well, so it was out of the question for running realtime applications - But there were (and are) quite some real-time OS for x86, like QNX or VxWorks, and there are even real-time Linux derivates for x86 CPUs.