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Article #1243

Re: battery backup for clock

#1243
From: robt
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1986 16:46
42 lines
3105 bytes
In article <1517@alvin.mcnc.UUCP> ravi@mcnc.UUCP (Ravi Subrahmanyan) writes:
>
>I'd like to have some information on a battery backup for the internal
>clock in the 520 ST.  I know someone posted a scheme for doing this
>many months back;  has anyone tried anything of the sort?  With
>success?  I would appreciate hearing about any experiences anyone may
>have had concerning this.  Please reply directly to me at the address
>given below, I'll summarise to the net if I get something.  Thanks,
>

  I have been playing with ways to keep the time from being destroyed on
my ST.  I never turn my machine off, so I don't need battery backup, but
I do want to get up after a reset  without  having to set the time again
and again.  A major culprit is the control panel desk  accessory,  which
sets the date to noon, May 17, 1985 whether  there is a time still valid
in the  keyboard  clock or not.  When I tried doing  without the control
panel, my time was fine as long as I had a calendar  desk  accessory  on
the boot disk.  I assume what is happening is that the keyboard clock is
undisturbed  over a reboot cycle, and the desk  accessory is setting the
TOS time to that in the keyboard  clock.  When a power cycle is done, or
when that  calendar  is not  around,  the time comes up as noon, Nov 20,
1985.

  Anyway, the control  panel is 15K and doesn't  work the way it should,
so I was more than happy to turf it and solve the problems of not having
it.  One thing was that I had to write a (one line!)  program to set the
printer  driver  to  expect an Epson  printer  for  screen  dumps.  This
preference is recorded in the  desktop.inf  file, but is ignored without
the control panel.  Curiously, the mouse and keyboard  sensitivities ARE
used  without  the  control  panel.  To set the  time,  you also  need a
program  which sets the keyboard  clock time; until you power off again,
your time will be fine.

  BTW, a followup  from Anees Munshi said he cut the RESET line going to
the  keyboard.  I *think* that line is only pulled low on power-up,  and
the reset is a non-maskable  interrupt.  That would explain why the time
can survive a reboot but not a power-up with my method.

#   UUCP : ...!ubc_vision!molihp!robt		Robert Thurlow		#
#   My thoughts are my own, and are void where prohibited by law.	#
#   "There was something fishy about the butler.  I think he was a	#
#    Pisces, probably working for scale."	-Nick Danger, 3rd Eye	#
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Message-ID: <185@molihp.UUCP>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utcs!mnetor!seismo!brl-adm!caip!andromeda!topaz!ll-xn!mit-amt!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!ubc-vision!molihp!robt
References: <1517@alvin.mcnc.UUCP>

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utcs!mnetor!seismo!brl-adm!caip!andromeda!topaz!ll-xn!mit-amt!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!tektronix!uw-beaver!ubc-vision!molihp!robt
From: robt@molihp.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Re: battery backup for clock
Message-ID: <185@molihp.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jul-86 12:46:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: molihp.185
Posted: Thu Jul 17 12:46:50 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Jul-86 08:25:52 EDT
References: <1517@alvin.mcnc.UUCP>
Reply-To: robt@molihp.UUCP (Robert L Thurlow)
Organization: Moli Energy, Vancouver, B.C., CANADA
Lines: 42