I was very annoyed by that too. I was late for meeting a few times because
I was looking at my PC time which was 2-3 minutes late. It's strange
sometimes it is faster than the real time.
Here is an idea that may help if you're on internet all the time. I use
Atomtime which has it setting that "Check Time when minimized" so it may
adjust your time in the background. There should be other network time
programs that can adjust the time based on server time. I cannot use
atomtime to check time since I'm behind the company firewall. AtomTime
generates error message a lot when checking time behind firewall. Atomtime
is based on US Navy Atomic time, and it is supposed to be super-accurate.


Changhsu Liu
[log in to unmask]


At 03:35 PM 2/8/99 -0600, you wrote:
>I've been asked to explain why the current time shown in many applications
>is often so far off from a wall clock - often losing or gaining several
>seconds a day.  I was wondering if someone could point me in the direction
>for a fairly technical reference.
>
>I once read a magazine article about this but can no longer find it.  It
>was written in DOS days and I believe their primary reason was because the
>PC reads the current time from the real-time, battery-backed-up clock at
>startup but then the operating system maintains the time from the timer
>interrupt which is unreliable.  Here's where my memory fails me.  Could
>someone fill in the gaps ... Why is this interrupt unreliable?  Is it a
>matter of the clock signal varying or is it just poorly synchronized with
>real-time?  Where do the clock signals for the various components - CPU,
>bus, real-time clock, etc. - come from?  I don't have an extensive
>background in basic electronics but do know quite a bit about the theory of
>how a computer works at this level.  I think I could understand a pretty
>detailed discussion of this.  I'd really appreciate it if someone could
>help me out in the next couple of days.  Thanks.
>
>                         PCBUILD's List Owner's:
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>                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>

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