jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) (03/29/91)
I checked the clock on my Tower XP this morning after it had been running
for 6 weeks or slow, and found it about 7 hours slow. Is there an easy fix
for this problem?
--
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity.
"You can even run GNUemacs under X-windows without paging if you allow
about 32MB per user." -- Bill Davidsen "Oink!" -- meburke@seachg.uucp (Michael Burke) (03/31/91)
In article <4886@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes: > >I checked the clock on my Tower XP this morning after it had been running >for 6 weeks or slow, and found it about 7 hours slow. Is there an easy fix >for this problem? > The Tower XP uses a "soft" clock to keep track of actual time. This "soft" clock works ok (generally) as long as it does not miss too many interrupts from the "hard" clock. On busy systems, one finds that the clock is a tad slow over a couple of days. Your example, while favourable for the reliability of the Tower XP, shows how bad the error can become. We once looked providing a "fix" - the Tower XP actually has a TOD clock - but we never got around to doing the work. -- --- Michael Burke Sea Change Corporation 6695 Millcreek Drive, Unit 8 Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 5R8 Tel: 416-542-9484 Fax: 416-542-9479 UUCP: ...!uunet!attcan!seachg!burke
jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) (04/01/91)
In article <1991Mar30.191005.11553@seachg.uucp> burke@seachg.UUCP (Michael Burke) writes: >The Tower XP uses a "soft" clock to keep track of actual time. This "soft" >clock works ok (generally) as long as it does not miss too many interrupts >from the "hard" clock. On busy systems, one finds that the clock is a tad >slow over a couple of days. Your example, while favourable for the >reliability of the Tower XP, shows how bad the error can become. My system isn't that busy, but there's another possible cause: at least on the XP, if you shut the system down, the clock is frozen and picks up where it left off. Part of my startup routine after a power outage or shutdown will be to examine the clock, and reset if needed. (Thanks, Steve.) It may be that the last time I checked the clock was before the last power outage. I've been tickled pink about the Tower's reliability. It's run longer than any continuous run my previous Unix box (a 286 running Microport) ever thought of. Now if I can just turn 1-meg memory boards (the 256K-chip variety) into bigger memory boards... >We once looked providing a "fix" - the Tower XP actually has a TOD clock - >but we never got around to doing the work. I would guess this is beyond the ability of us poor souls without a source license... Is there a way to read the TOD clock from user-mode software? If so, I could reuse a trick from the Microport system: let cron fire off a process every day or so to read the clock and reset the Unix date value. -- Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu | adequately be explained by stupidity. "You can even run GNUemacs under X-windows without paging if you allow about 32MB per user." -- Bill Davidsen "Oink!" -- me