looking for Socket.select with maximum time or other solution

[Charma]

Hello everyone!
I am currently working on a server which many clients can connect to and 
i am using socket.select with my socketset which all clients are in. 
This far everything works very fine. But i would prefer my server-loop 
to continue e.g. at least 10 times every second to work on other things 
even when nothing is send from clients.

Is there anything i can do to force socket.select to stop waiting after 
a given time even if all sockets will stay as marked with nothing to 
receive?

Maybe someone has an even better/other/different idea?!?

Also i would like to know: Is there any way i can cancel socket.select 
while it is waiting? I mean, i would like to be able to quit my server 
clean without needing to connect with a client again and so on...

Thanks for any suggestions and help!!
Sorry about my engrish!!

Charma