[Coco] Real Time Clock for the Coco

[Robert Gault]

Richard Lorbieski wrote:
>
> During yesterday's Coco podcat, I asked about having a Real Time Clock (RTC) for the Coco. Back in the day, I had a Burke and Burke XT hard drive interface with a built in RTC. It was one less thing to enter on bootup (unattended boot).
>
> I looked at hardware options and it occurred to me...
>
> Why not get the clock info from drivewire? The PC already has a RTC and it usually gets updated via the Internet.
>
> No hardware mods need, just a patch or utility.
>
> Is this possible?
>
>

Richard,

It certainly would be possible as OS-9 users can currently access the DW clock under OS-9 with the 
clock2_dw module. I've not bothered to write a program to read the DW clock from Basic as I have a 
SmartWatch(c) on my Coco in an RS-232 Pak. I wrote a program that creates a new system function 
DATE$ which reads the SmartWatch. My program SWREAD.BAS will read or set the clock and install 
DATE$. It can also zero out the clock so it can be used as a stopwatch.

I'd bet that several people on Maltedmedia have already written the program you are asking about to 
access the DW clock from Basic.

Robert