Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    If your Clock IC is a MSM62428 Chip then there are some
    possibilities...
    
    1st forget the Litium battery , take a 4.5V NiCd Accumulator and
    an 470 Ohm resistor to replace the Litium Battery
    
    2nd or take a normal 9 V Battery and  put an 4.7 K Resistor in the
    Battery Line.
    
    Hope it helps.. Ingo
    

    It might be that a program has gone berserk and referenced all of
    memory, destructively.  That would explain the scrambled screen and the
    activation of a drive.  Storing random garbage into the clock registers
    can confuse it.  The only way I know of to reset the clock from being
    "totally wedged" is to disconnect the battery for a few seconds.
    
    Since you have an A500, and the clock is on the A501, you might be able
    to do this by removing and reinstalling the A501.
        John Sauter

    Roy at Memory Location could not reproduce the Setclock failure,
    so I'll take it home for $15 (and a 3-day vacation watching
    taped movies ;-) ).
    He says there are no amiaga diagnostic paackages.  Seems like a
    primo opportunity for someone who knows anything about diags.
    Tom

    I beleive you are not alone,  I got exactly a similar symptom
    with a A2000/HD.  The kids were playing with the amiga and
    (I guess) they powered off while the startup-sequence was
    accessing the clock.  This left parity error in the battery
    backed up chip (Again just an assumption) and the setclock
    program wouldn't work.
    
    I had to re-boot with a 1.2 workbench to get it set right.
    (I was just about to short the battery to get it reset).
    It seems that 1.2 does something different from 1.3?
    
    Bug or feature?
    
    Vince,

    
    Have you tried a "SETCLOCK RESET" ?
    
    This worked for me :')
    
    -Bruce
    

    Due to Andy Finkel (author of most BCPL commands), he forgot to
    implement some basic reset sequences in the 1.3 version of SetClock.
    
    Though if you run into such problems, try the 1.2 version and best
    of all avoid sloppy programs the bust into the RTC registers...
    
    Regards,
    
    	<CB>
    The Software Brewery
    

    There is a new Virus floating around (called the AIDS virus, of
    all things...) that attacks the clock.  It is not yet covered by
    the latest version of VirusX, but the next version should have it.
    
    A friend of mine got it, and it seemed that the only way to fix
    it was to take out the battery on the clock, put it back in, and
    then reset it.
    
    Steve O

    re .7
    
    Maybe a virus, but that shouldn't be a problem for well written
    "SetClock RESET" command. Anything software can do to the RTC registers
    can be undone by other software.
    
    As far as a virus living in the RTC is concerned, this is plain
    BULLSH*T. Read the A2000/500 tech docs to learn why...
    
    -	<CB>
    

    
    Don't get upset.  I'm just telling you what I saw.  My friend who
    got the thing is a very experienced Amiga programmer and knows the
    machine VERY well.  He tried everything he could think of for a
    few days.
    
    I was there when he got it.  He booted with an infected disk, and
    it gave him all sorts of nasty virus messages and did some strange
    stuff with the screen.  At this point he took out the disk, shut
    off the machine for a bit,  turned it back on, and then rebooted
    on his harddisk.
    
    Sadly enough, these programmers who write virus's are usually better
    programmers that Amiga or any other company who writes software
    for the Amiga can find.
    
    Steve O

    He, I didn't mean to offend anybody here... I'm just so fed up
    with these ridiculous clock virus rumours.
    
    As far as booting after an infection is concerned, only a complete
    powercycle is the safe way (or making sure that every Reset and
    KickTagPointer points towards it should..).
    
    If there is REAL need for a good and total RTC reset program (read
    more than five people), the Software Brewery might write one (PD
    of course).
    Let me know what you think about it.
    
    No hard feelings,
    	<CB>
    The Software Brewery
    

Re: .6

>    Due to Andy Finkel (author of most BCPL commands), he forgot to

Andy Finkle would probably die if he heard someone blame him for the
BCPL commands.  The BCPL commands are all from Metacomco.  They have
been expanded and improved by the folks at Commodore, but they didn't
write them.

Almost all (probably all) of the new commands added the Amiga since
V1.0 of AmigaDOS have been written in C.  Not all of the commands
in the C: directory are written in BCPL anymore.

    
    Re: .11
    
    Yup, you're perfectly right there Randy. So I'll carefully re-phrase
    my statement into:
    Andy Finkel (author of most new C: commands and supervisor of the
    DOS = DOS guru)......
    
    Let's put the blame for BCPL in the Amiga-OS where it belongs, on
    Mr. Tim King.                                                    
    
    -	<CB>
    

Re: .12

>    Andy Finkel (author of most new C: commands and supervisor of the
>    DOS = DOS guru)......

Andy would thank you, I'm sure.

	I have a problem unlike the first note (.0).  My clock has started to
not keep the correct time.  I went into preferences (ProWrite system) and set
the clock to the correct time.  Then, the clock (on screen) did a jump from
say 10:37 to 10:24.  I checked the 10:24 and it was what I had set it to in
Preferences, um, about 13 minutes ago.  So I warm start, boot system and it 
again says 10:24.  Since I waited a couple of minutes, it should have been
later.  
	Anyway, thinking the ProWrite system disk was thrashed, I booted 1.2
and set the clock in the original Preferences (the one that it came with).
Once again, it screwed up about 5 min. later, and when I warm started again
it came up with the time I set 10 min. ago.  Can someone help me with this?

	My first impression is a dead battery.  Can I just open up the A501
and replace the lithium jobidobi, or am I facing major surgery?

--mikie--

The way I understand it is that there are two clocks in the system. The
AMIGA keeps the time you use and the A501 keps the battery backuped time 
which is loaded when you boot. To reset the backed up time you must set
the time in preferences and then issue the commnad "setclock save" or 
something like that.
-Tom-

set the time in preferences or in a cli with the data command, then 

type setclock opt save.

To reload the time (should be in startup-sequence)

setclock opt load

John

    Got the infamous "Battery backed up clock not found" message last weekend.
    Removing the 501 board did nothing to solve the problem, maybe I just
    didn't have it out long enough. After a few minutes of poking 
    through this notesfile and finding this note, a reboot with WB1.2 allowed 
    me to issue the "setclock opt reset" command. 

    Question: Why did I suddenly encounter this after almost a year of 
    pretty much trouble free operation other than an occasional explainable 
    guru?

    Answer: I bought a new game (Anarchy, a Defender-like clone) from
    Psygnosis. Obviously it mucks around with the RTC registers. I promptly
    returned it. Don't know if other Psygnosis titles do similar things,
    but it'll keep me from buying another. 

    -Dom

    re -1
    
    	Yes this happened to me also..
    
    	However you do not have to use 1.2
    
    	With WorkBench 1.3 
    	setclock reset also works.. then do a date and a setclock save
    
    			.Pete.

>>    Answer: I bought a new game (Anarchy, a Defender-like clone) from
>>  Psygnosis. Obviously it mucks around with the RTC registers. I promptly

	I played Anarchy for a long time on my 2000,and never had a bit of a
problem. It is also one of the few game that run on the 3000 properly. It could
be what you stated is true,but it could also be you were caught in a time warp
when when you booted the system. Seriously! This has happened to many people
under different sets of circumstances. Maybe we should look to the hardware
for answers. Everyone blames software, because you will be running something
when it strikes,but it would not hurt to track mother board revs ect.
	 as an aside How is the timing on games usually tracked ? if the game
anacrhy runs on the 1000,5000,2000,and 3000 the same when others seem to go
crazy we can assume they use a different source for a timebase. If it is say
the RTC registers then we can look to this a lot in the future because this is
the way all games should function.
								bill

    What munged my clock that weekend could be anybody's guess, but I'd
    never had it happen before then, and it hasn't happened since. Could
    have been merely coincidence, but Anarchy was the only new piece of
    s/w I'd tried that particular weekend. Glad to hear the game hasn't
    caused your machine any problems.

    -Dom

    Re .20:
    
    Dom,
    
    My clock has become munged a couple of times for reasons unknown.  The
    most likely cause is some kind of race condition in a clock handling
    routine that can leave the clock registers in an inconsistent state if
    you happen to crash or boot at the wrong moment.  Fortunately, the RESET
    option works just fine.

>            <<< Note 2346.21 by ULTRA::KINDEL "Bill Kindel @ LTN1" >>>
.
>     My clock has become munged a couple of times for reasons unknown.  The
>     most likely cause is some kind of race condition in a clock handling
>     routine that can leave the clock registers in an inconsistent state if

I always figured it was some errant program taking a walk through uncharted
memory, strait across the clock registers.

    Hi,
    
    I have had the clock on my 2000 wandering for months. It seemed to vary
    and gain more under heavy load than at other times like during an
    lharc.
    
    I recently upgraded to WB2.04 (yeah - nice...) so I was interested to
    see what would happen to the clock. Well it now gains a regular 50% 
    regardless of the load. I have tried swapping the two serial/parallel
    chips but no change.
    
    Any ideas??
    
    regards
    kevin

    There is a variable cap that controls the clock.  If that is off, the
    adjustment is absolutely no fun at all.  Very small changes make big
    differences (is my experiance anyway).  If it is your battery, then you
    will notice a loss after power off and may even get the
    <unset><unset><unset> on setclock.  Another not so wonderful scenario
    is the possiblility of ripple on the power to the clock.  Doest REAL
    nasty stuff to the clock.  Hope this helps
    
    Clark

    If you've never tuned a capacitor before, be sure you use a plastic
    tuning screwdriver designed for the purpose.  Metal screwdrivers add to
    the the capacitance whilst (Thanks, ALL-IN-1 guys) tuning, thus
    throwing your total capacitance out of whack.  You can pick one up at
    any electronics store.