>I managed to get ntpd working on my 68K macs, but only certain
>versions would stay up.  It appears that if the clock gets off
>"too much" or is deemed "too unstable", then ntpd gives up.

Yes.

>I don't remember what builds I ended up using, I just kept
>trying different ones until one stayed up. ;->
>
>I got my version from the "main" ntp site - I think it was at
>udel.edu......?
>
>I should mention that under heavy load, ntpd is not capable of
>correcting the clock, as it drifts too fast.  I only saw this when
>*really* abusing the machine for testing purposes.

I think you can cheat this a bit by running ntpdate(8)
fired off from cron pretty often.  Of course, if ntpd(8)
has already died, then you would need to ressurrect it
as well -- perhaps a tiny shell script that runs ntpdate
and then checks if ntpd is still running (restarting it
if not).  Or, maybe just deliberately:
    kill -9 `cat /var/run/ntpd.pid`
    ntpd &
(or thereabouts...)

--don