Path: utzoo!dciem!array!colin
From: colin@array.UUCP (Colin Plumb)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: time of year clocks (was 64 bit clocks)
Message-ID: <602@array.UUCP>
Date: 27 Aug 90 20:58:25 GMT
References: <5539@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <13285@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <30728@super.ORG> <26196@bellcore.bellcore.com> <26199@mimsy.umd.edu> <AGLEW.90Aug25131545@dwarfs.crhc.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Array Systems Computing, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
Lines: 26

>>> (Is seems
>>> obvious that a million-dollar computer would be expected to provide
>>> at least the functionality of a $10 digital watch, but people
>>> took some serious convincing of that...)

>> I am constantly amazed at the machines that do *not* have these things.

When I was at Cogent Research, we threw on a time-of-day clock and 32K
of battery-backed-up RAM mostly because all the PCs and Macs we used
had them and if we're going to charge $xx,000 for our box, we ought to
have the toy features, as well.  The audio circuity was there on an
even thinner excuse.  We spent some NRE time isolating noise from
the audio circuits, choosing the speaker and designing the case to
accomodate it, (it's a 3.5" speaker, facing straight out the front of
the machine, and mounted on an internal panel so the bass doesn't "leak
around" and get lost... it sounds amazingly good after listening to a
Mac), and I think they'd do it again.  All these features have debugging
value (diagnostic routines and fatal error handlers log their activity
in NVRAM for post-mortems), and they're easy to add: just schlung 'em
on the same 8-bit bus you're using for serial ports, floppy controllers,
and the like.  Maybe one day they'll use part of that NVRAM for a write-behind
buffer for the disks.  Mostly, it's handy to have around, and the cost
doesn't compare to 15ns SRAMS and transmission-line analysis and all that;
it's a handful of commodity parts and easy, 1-MHz engineering.
-- 
	-Colin