[amsat-bb] Re: PC clock

[Larry Gerhardstein]

Greg,

During the process of getting a serial port interface that worked 
properly with W7-64b, I experienced a myriad of system crashes.  This is 
possibly why my clock got off by about +30 seconds.  I often check my 
PC's clock against the WWV clock on my wall, especially when tracking 
birds.  It's now on to within a second.  If it got off by more than 2 or 
3, I'd want to corrected it; the problem is not Doppler, it's a near 
overhead pass (that's when I discovered the PC time error).  Plus, I 
want correction automatic and not have to mess with it for a long time.  
I believe the once-a-week default in Win7 for syncing PC time with 
Internet server time is too loose.  Once a day or even once an hour 
seems better to me.

73, Larry W7IN

On 5/9/2010 7:05 PM, Greg D. wrote:
> Hi Larry,
>
> I know PC clocks are not all that accurate, but we're talking seconds 
> per month.  Needing to update a clock more often than that probably 
> isn't due to the PC hardware.  I've never had one be off this much 
> unless the clock battery was dead, and any PC new enough to run Win-7 
> isn't going to have that issue.  I would suspect that there is a some 
> software you are running that is messing it up.  Back in the DOS days, 
> this was a common occurrence, and I'm surprised to hear about it under 
> something more modern, but my gut feel tells me that is what is happening.
>
> Maybe a device driver or something else low-level.  Try booting 
> something else (a "Live" CD of Linux, for example) to prove the 
> hardware is good.  Go back to Windows piece by piece.  If you can 
> figure out which it is, then this whole idea of applying bandaids can 
> go away.
>
> Just a thought,
>
> Greg  KO6TH

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