[Coco] DS1216

[George Ramsower]

On 9/21/2015 11:33 PM, K. Pruitt wrote:
>
>>>
>>  The system clock keeps HORRIBLE time. Drivewire would have to update 
>> the system clock at LEAST every five or ten seconds. So, this may not 
>> be an option.
>> George R.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>
> Does your PC keep horrible time? Your drivewire time will be the 
> system time from your PC. I'm not sure how often drivewire updates the 
> time, but it seems to stay pretty accurate for me. But my hardware 
> clock doesn't lose time either, so your experience may be different.
>
> When I boot in to drivewire I utilize the software clock When I just 
> boot in to the CoCo without drivewire I use Robert Gault's SWRead 
> program to pull in the time from the clock chip and keep the system 
> time updated.
>
> As I recall, booting in to drivewire with the NitrOS-9 boot file set 
> to utilize the clock chip will result in a system hang-up. This may 
> have been fixed though, I don't know.
>
> I'd can try and alter the disassembled source code for getclk and see 
> if I can change it to accept a parameter. No guarantees as it may 
> exceed my skill level, but I can give it a shot.
>
>
  Oh! I should specify on these matters. This PC keeps excellent time 
and once a week, it updates from WWV.

  The coco keeps terrible time without the smart watch but for what I'm 
doing, I have to use getclk about every  five or ten seconds or the 
software clock in OS9 will lose about one to two seconds over a period 
of about thirty seconds. This is okay for normal use as a few seconds 
won't matter.
  I have a B09 procedure running in the background with a priority of 
10. So normally, it will update the system clock about every20 seconds. 
Not an issue unless accurate time is necessary. The I change the 
priority to 128. At that priority, it will update about every five 
seconds which is acceptable. That's while running the application for 
the mechanical clocks. Without that overhead, the routine to run 
"getclk" is a lot faster and again, the priority of 10 is plenty fast.
  If it gets off by a couple seconds or more, then monitoring a pendulum 
becomes impossible to determine if it's swinging as it should. So time 
is critical when doing this. If I could do it on this PC, I would but I 
have no idea how, nor do I know how to even monitor the pendulum with a PC.
  Coco is KING for me and my learning abilities are very limited since I 
had my accident a bit more than two years ago. I'm still slow on the 
Coco. Some things used to be a snap and now, I have been dog-earing the 
pages in my  OS9 books. When I find what I'm looking for, it's 
always..."Darn!! I knew that!!". I guess the interface to the hard drive 
in my head now has a bug in it.
  It could be a problem with the "refresh" cycles.... see the previous 
paragraph.

  I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, Kevin. Good luck modifying "setclk".

George R.