On 30 Nov 98 at 15:12, Jim Meagher wrote:

> James Kortisses wrote:
>
> > recently the real time clock looses time. after resetting it is slow in
> > just a few minutes.
> > ....
> > it looses time when the p.c. is on.
>
> Since the battery is always connected the voltage supply for the
> RTC chip ... a bad battery can affect any or all timing operations
> (like sound generation) within the PC.

  Since the battery is connected to the RTC, but the time is kept by
the OS handler for IRQ 0 after being "sampled" from the RTC at boot,
an old/flaky battery should not be able to produce these symptoms.

> > but I also noticed a change in the sound card output. it's choppy.

  This sounds to me like the PC is generally responding slowly to
IRQs.  It *could* indicate a problem with the timer chip itself
(probably not a separately-replacable component any more) or the
timing crystal, but first I'd check to see if there is some software
(either a background task or a virus) that could be interfering with
the normal latency of the system.

David G

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