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From: jcg852@anu.oz.au (John C Gallant)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: A500 system clock stopped - ideas?
Summary: System clock not running, setclock works ok.
Keywords: clock broken
Message-ID: <7849@jcsneuro>
Date: 18 Feb 91 05:16:51 GMT
Sender: news@newshost.anu.edu.au
Distribution: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Organization: Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Lines: 29

I have an A500 with A501, 1.2 ROMs and WB 1.2 and 1.3, modem on serial
port and printer on parallel. I recently found  that the system clock
is not running (it used to!). More specifically,  I can set the system
date and time using 'setclock opt load' from the battery-backed clock,
and the time is set ok, but the time doesn't  advance from then on. I
wrote a short C program to read the system clock using the library call
and found it was actually running but extremely slowly - like several
hundred microseconds counted on the system clock for every second of
real time. I know that the system clock is guaranteed to never return
the same time twice, so I think this very slow running is due to
various tasks asking for the time repeatedly. It doesn't matter whether
I use WB 1.2 or 1.3.

The documentation I have doesn't explain how the system clock is run, so
I'm not sure where to start looking for problems. I'd like some info
on how the system clock works and any ideas on where to look for my
problem. 

FYI, I'm an electronic engineer and programmer but without much in the
way of test equipment available to me. Feel free to be as technical as
you need to be.

Please send mail (if you can) and if there is enough interest I will
post a sumary and (hopefully!) notes on the repair.

Thanks a bundle

John Gallant
jcg852@csc.anu.oz.au