[Coco] Battery-Backed RTCs for CoCo?

Gene Heskett gheskett at shentel.net
Fri Nov 30 19:17:10 EST 2018


On Friday 30 November 2018 15:24:46 RETRO Innovations wrote:

> On 11/30/2018 9:34 AM, Robert Gault wrote:
> > Jim,
> >
> > Can't say much about relative cost of the RTCs
>
> Well, it's not cost per se, but compatibility.  The cheaper RTCs needs
> new drivers, as they are not compatible with the DS1315 and the DS1216
>
> > but there is no reason to worry about IRQ problems. There is no need
> > to update the OS-9 time frequently. Just always use the clock_soft
> > module and run a separate program to read the RTC say every 10
> > minutes.
> >
> > I have my NitrOS-9 set this way and even though a 9 byte initialize
> > code must be sent to my RTC for each read, no significant time is
> > lost.
>
> Gene Heskett.  Care to weigh in?
>
> For reference, here was the original concern:
>
> On 11/10/2018 9:05 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > The one in the B&B is fairly good, but its security password has to
> > be clocked into it a bit at a time from an $AA55 integer.  And it
> > has to be done while all interrupts are disabled. And having the
> > IRQ's locked out for so long absolutely trashes the bitbanger if its
> > in use, and renders the deluxe rs232 pack workless above around 300
> > baud from frameing overruns. I worked on that clock module too, but
> > it screwed up so many file transfers I bought the disto 4&1 & went
> > scsi.

I have not looked at recent clocks since its been split up into kernel 
module and public facing for the various hardware. But I'd expect the 
B&B XT-RTC is still a big disaster when a download is in progress as I 
said above.

Any further opinion from me would only be after I've had a fresh whack at 
getting my head wrapped around the new 2 piece module organizations. And 
thats not likely to happen until Dee has passed, (COPD) and I'm 
officially just an old fart rattling around in this house by myself. 
Hopefully I'll still have the thinker power left by then.

-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>


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