[Tfug] PC Clock

[dave jordan]

Jim,

Given Glenn's msg I suppose replacing the battery is the way to go.

But, my understanding is that the OS reads the date & time from the
battery-powered hardware clock at startup, and then proceeds to tick
off seconds using a separate, main-powered oscillator.  Thus if you
leave your system on for a long time the two clocks will diverge. 
And, when you shut down, the OS might write what it thinks is the
correct time back to the hardware (my system definitely does this). 
You didn't go into great detail as to how hard you've looked at your
problem, so the question is, which is more off, the BIOS or the OS?

If you replace the battery and find the problem recurs, or is eased
but not gone, you might rethink the kludgyness of synching to an
outside source.  If you like your time very accurate this is a big
help.  I mean, that's why those resources exist, why not use them?

Also, there are "jitter"-correcting software utilities out there - I
believe you feed them some spec as to how much time your h/w or s/w
clock gains/loses per day, and it applies corrections.  something like
that.

In any case I doubt your clock problem can have any effect on other
hardware integrity.  the bus and cpu have their own oscillators.

-dave

On 11/1/05, Jim Secan <jim at nwra.com> wrote:
> I'm running an SWS system with an ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard, and the
> on-board clock has started running systematically fast - on order 10min/day
> increase.  I'm kludging by nudging the clock via ntp, but I'm worried
> something may be amiss on the hardware side.  It was suggested that the
> battery may be going bad, but I would think (perhaps naively) that this
> would result in a slow clock.  Might this be the battery, or is something
> else going on?  Is changing the battery just a matter of buying one and
> doing a swap-out?
>
> TIA
> Jim
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