Linux speed!

[tecknophreak]

Well, let's see I've got RH 7.1(work) and Slackware(home). I need to run this program as fast as possible. The program takes info in on a Data Aquisition card on the pci bus, then spits it out over to the scsi card(also on the pci bus). I don't need keyboard or monitor, just need to poll the serial for input and send a little output(status and a word of data).

How can I set this up so it'll go faster? What programs can I turn off? And would it matter if I used slack or rh?

[MBMarduk]

Distro's don't matter at all.
Turn off unnecessary services.
Make a bare-bones kernel (I think "no modules support" also helps)
That *should* be it for software.
GL.