[time-nuts] PC clock comparison software?

John Ackermann N8UR jra at febo.com
Wed Dec 20 15:22:42 UTC 2006


Peter Vince said the following on 12/20/2006 10:11 AM:
>      I could be talking a lot of hot air, so please forgive me, but I've
> had a thought: if PCs still use a Real Time Clock chip, could a hardware
> modification be done to give them an accurate clock frequency, rather
> than relying on whatever cheap crystal is installed on the mother board?
> Maybe one of the aforementioned TAPR Clock-Blocks configured for, I
> guess, a 32768 Hz output?

One sad thing is that the Clock-Block can't generate a precise 32768 Hz
given a common (1, 5, or 10 MHz) input frequency.  The available divider
ratios just don't work out.

(By the way, though, the Clock-Block might be useful for some
low-frequency clocking tasks.  The main synthesizer chip is spec'd for
output down to 2MHz, though it can go quite a bit lower than that, but
there is an additional divider chip on the board that can be used to
divide the synthesizer output by factors from 16 to 16384.)

John




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