An engine data acquisition and control system (1) measures cylinder pressure at a high degree of resolution and then processes it for portions of the combustion cycle of interest for performing combustion calculations. The data are utilized to calculate combustion parameters, and the combustion parameters may be utilized to control the engine's (55) fuel and/or spark timing/duration, and other variables affecting the combustion process. The system architecture provides for acquisition of very large amounts of data without unduly loading the CPU (40).