On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, someone wrote:

> > 3. my clock is losing time, like 10-20 minutes a day.  I suppose it
> > could be the almost 7 year old battery.  shouldn't ntp keep the clock
> > in sync, regardless of the battery's condition?

Didn't see the original message, or I'd have replied to it directly.
Anyway....

No, the battery has nothing to do with it.  That just keeps the clock
running when the machine is turned off and/or unplugged (depending on the
motherboard).        
                     
Remember that time on PowerPC is (generally) calculated based on bus
speed.  I assume that NetBSD does this as well (since I think that's the
only processor-independent way to do it....  ;-)

A number of processor cards report a bogus number for the bus speed in
their open firmware declaration rom, particularly when overclocked.  Most
OSes have an option for manually overriding the bus speed.  I've never
tried that under NetBSD, so I can't say for sure.  Anyway, try finding a
copy of the old Newer Technologies' gauge series and running Clockometer. 
That will get you a better estimate of the actual bus speed.  Try that
value.

If it still drifts too much, get the exact number of seconds it reported
in...  say a day.  Multiply the bus speed by the real number of seconds in
the day, then divide by the number of seconds it reported in that same
period of time.

Hope that helps.


Later,
David

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                    Check out my weekly web comic:
                     http://www.techmagazine.org