Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!texsun!digi.lonestar.org!crichmon
From: crichmon@digi.lonestar.org (Charles Richmond)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: Reading the timer
Message-ID: <1398@digi.lonestar.org>
Date: 24 Dec 90 04:19:19 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications, Plano Tx.
Lines: 13

The time of day is read by TOS from the keyboard processor.  I believe that
the time is packed into a single 32 bit word to match the way MS-DOS handles
the time stamp for files.

It is possible to get the time of day from the keyboard to the nearest
second.  This requires patching some interrupt vector and writing a
routine to send the time request packet to the keyboard and receive the
time packet.  Pages 67 through 84 in the book Atari ST Internals (from
Abacus Software) details the interface with the ST keyboard.  It seems I
read somewhere that the keyboard processor keeps time to milliseconds, but
cannot find it now.

Hope this helps.