Question

I want to generate an interrupt while a function is running and then I want the CPU to execute some specific ISR, and after finishing the ISR, the function will resume executing. I am using Windows XP and the MinGW compiler.

Answer 1

no hardware is there actually I want first to generate interrupt somehow and handle it later on I will do it on actual hardware

A real hardware interrupt will toggle one of the CPU pins and cause it to dispatch to the ISR. I can’t think of any really transparent way to emulate that.

One way to pause the currently-running function might be to use the SuspendThread function, and then use a different thread to run the ISR.

A different possibility to investigate might be to use Fibers.

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Edit

As cxxl’s answer suggested, another possibility is to use a real-time priority thread:

• Have two threads, one to run your function and another thread to run the emulated ISR
• Use the “CPU affinity” function on both threads, to ensure they both run on the same CPU
• Set the priority of the ISR thread to “realtime”

Then, whenever you allow the ISR-emulating thread run, it will pre-empt the other thread.