SoothSayer <SaySooth@TheMonastery.org> writes:

> On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:14:10 -0700, Jim Thompson
> <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 16:09:27 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>krw@attt.bizz wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:03:38 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>>> But what I meant was PC sales in general, including laptops. Many older
>>>>> folks buy laptops these days because they don't want a space-hogging
>>>>> tower and monitor setup. And it's the saem thing there: Writing setup
>>>>> info that hardly ever changes into voltaile RAM is not smart.
>>>> 
>>>> Who does that, with flash being so ubiquitous?
>>>
>>>
>>>Jeff brought an example, I don't know which mfgs use this:
>>>
>>>http://www.bioscentral.com/misc/cmosmap.htm#
>>>
>>>I have a Dell and the manual states that an image of the CMOS should be
>>>taken before removing the battery, in order to be able to restore the
>>>settings in there. But it fails to say how and what software to use for
>>>this.
>>
>>Maybe just write down the settings?  There's not very many.
>>		
>>                                        ...Jim Thompson
>
>   One of the best points in the entire thread.

I usually try to set things up to work with the defaults anyway.

-- 

John Devereux

On 2013-03-03, SoothSayer <SaySooth@TheMonastery.org> wrote:
> On 3 Mar 2013 04:20:56 GMT, Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>On 2013-03-02, josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>>I'm currently within 50ms of UTC/
>>>>		
>>>>                                        ...Jim Thompson
>>>
>>> You do not need an addon since Win2000/XP they do ntp natively, should be
>>> within 1 ms or better.
>>
>>speaking NTP is half of the solution, clock scaling is the other half.
>>without clock scaling you get serious jitter each time the clock is
>>resynchronised.
>
>   Your Internet connection has latencies and jitter as well.
>
> see what the FCC says about your hooks.
>
>   See who they say the best is.
>
> http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/ookla.htm

they say I've got 4ms jitter not bad for the other side of the world,
 
>   I get 24 down and send 20 up, and have 36ms latency with 2ms jitter.
>
>   Damn near T3.  Not bad for $50 a month.

I pay about half that, for a slow DSL connection.

to nz.pool.ntp.org I get ICMP pings between 34.7 and 35.8 ms (6 hops).
and TCP pings in the same ballpark.

OTOH to the national standard I get 5ms jitter 

I haven't bothered to optimise my NTP settings I'm still using the
defaults.  which is pick 4 servers at random from an international pool.

-- 
&#9858;&#9859; 100% natural

On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:06:15 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> =
wrote:

>josephkk wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:54:28 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> =
wrote:
>>=20
>>> Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:42:39 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Well, it's already done. So not I am wondering about the laptops.
>>>>> They've got to have such batteries as well. Maybe time to check =
those out.
>>>> Laptops do not have button cell holders.  They have wire leads spot
>>>> welded or soldered to the button battery, a short pair of wires, and=
 a
>>>> tiny connector.  The battery is insulated in shrink tube.  The =
ritual
>>>> is the same if you want to preserve the settings.  Leave the power
>>>> applied to the laptop and the laptop running.  Unplug the old =
battery
>>>> and quickly insert the new battery.  Most such batteries are easily
>>>> accessible through a door on the bottom of the laptop, although =
there
>>>> are a few abominations where the manufacturer elected to hide the
>>>> battery in difficult to find location.
>>>>
>>> Why does the change have to be quick? Isn't the circuit powered as =
long
>>> as the laptop is? Because then one could solder in a new battery and
>>> re-use the connector instead of shelling out lots of dough for a
>>> specialty battery plus shipping charges.
>>>
>>> Hey, it's nice, this morning the PC showed the correct time again :-)
>>>
>>> What I really don't understand why in this day and age they don't =
write
>>> the settings into flash. I mean, we even successfully do that on =
totally
>>> cheapo uC design.
>>=20
>> I kinda hate be snotty here but, since when is time a constant value? =
 The
>> battery is to keep the clock running.  Replacement cycles should be
>> similar to most watch batteries.
>>=20
>
>I meant all the other settings. Think about it a little more: Why does
>the handbook insist you copy everything in the setup before swapping the
>battery? They would surely not say that if all you'd lose is date and
>time (which nowadays cen even be auto-updated from the web).

I'll check my manuals, but it is more difficult to make static ram that
needs battery than a bit of flash.  Look at the common PICs, AVRs, and
such; very many have flash, none have static ram requiring battery.

?-)
=20

On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:42:33 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

>
>>
>>Ok, I just bought a new set of ink roller pens so at least I wouldn't
>>run out of ink :-)
>
>I just bought some T\u\l (that's an over-bar :) medium needlepoint
>pens.  I've been having problems with the usual rollerball offerings
>going all the way thru the cheap-ass paper masquerading as "green",
>and bleeding such that readability goes to hell.  So far the T\u\l
>pens seem quite good.
>
>Do the world a favor... locate a greenie and burn his ass to the
>ground >:-}
>	=09
>                                        ...Jim Thompson

The way to really get the point across to the is to force them to use =
only
the green products that are seriously inferior.

?-)

On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 09:03:38 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> =
wrote:

>josephkk wrote:
>> On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:43:01 -0800, Joerg <invalid@invalid.invalid> =
wrote:
>>=20
>>>> True.  It's the clock and status registers below 0Fh that get
>>>> scribbled to constantly.  One could split the CMOS function in half,
>>>> with the lower half continuing to be CMOS, while the rest is changed
>>>> to flash.  However, that will add front end cost and additional
>>>> complexity, which are not good things.
>>>>
>>> Wouldn't it be a zero-cost piece of cake to at least write those to =
hard
>>> disk and in case of finding a blank offer the user to restore from
>>> there? Also, the BIOS is in flash so why not store there instead?
>>=20
>> The "CMOS" has long ago gone to flash onboard the southbridge chip.
>>> It would behove the industry to think about this because there is one
>>> major reason why PC sales are slumping: The things became to darn
>>> complicated for ol'Leroy. He does not want to face a pricey Geek =
Squad
>>> call every time some obtuse "unrecoverable error" has occurred. So he
>>> invests his money into a smart phone instead. Because that's not
>>> complicated. A PC is complicated.
>>=20
>> I think you really missed the boat on this one.  Desktops in the home =
has
>> hit saturation, but laptops for students and many other travel prone
>> people is still growing.  My latest laptop might be able to eat your 2
>> year old desktop for lunch performance wise; it is a real screamer.
>>=20
>
>And after 2h the fun is over, battery exhausted. I do heavy SPICE and a
>laptop won't last long that way. The HD writes for the RAW files alone
>are a major burden.
>
>But what I meant was PC sales in general, including laptops. Many older
>folks buy laptops these days because they don't want a space-hogging
>tower and monitor setup. And it's the saem thing there: Writing setup
>info that hardly ever changes into voltaile RAM is not smart.

It has a line cord and brick for doing the SPICE runs.  Other than that i
seem to get over 5 hours no problem.

?-)

Jasen Betts wrote:
> 
> The XT dodn't have an RTC, DOS would by default ask you the time on
> boot (all XT the clones I encountered did have an RTC but needed a
> vendor specific app to update the DOS clock from the RTC)
> the clock was in the I/O address space

   Some did.  Some were on the clone motherboard, some pluged in under
the BIOS Eprom and some were on a card.  The cards were good sellers.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 02 Mar 2013 22:23:53 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
> ?mike.terrell@earthlink.net? wrote:
> 
> ?   Or just restore the defults on powerup?
> 
> That works, but is full of traps that are often difficult to diagnose.
> The most common example is resetting the CMOS and discovering that the
> previously functional hard disk will not boot.  On todays machines
> that is usually the SATA mode of either AHCI or ATA Emulation (or RAID
> if applicable).  In the distant past, it was LBA mode.  There are
> other (video window size, com port assignments, parallel port mode,
> etc) that will cause problems if reset to default.

   Yes, but sometimes you have no choice.  The dying battery has
scrambled the contents, and the default gets you close.  The one that
got me the first time was the motherboard booting too fast for an older
hard drive, and having to turn the memory test on in the BIOS to slow it
down.  That was early Pentium boards, if my memory is correct.

On 3 Mar 2013 04:20:56 GMT, Jasen Betts <jasen@xnet.co.nz> wrote:

>On 2013-03-02, josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>>>
>>>I'm currently within 50ms of UTC/
>>>		
>>>                                        ...Jim Thompson
>>
>> You do not need an addon since Win2000/XP they do ntp natively, should be
>> within 1 ms or better.
>
>speaking NTP is half of the solution, clock scaling is the other half.
>without clock scaling you get serious jitter each time the clock is
>resynchronised.

  Your Internet connection has latencies and jitter as well.

see what the FCC says about your hooks.

  See who they say the best is.

http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/ookla.htm

  I get 24 down and send 20 up, and have 36ms latency with 2ms jitter.

  Damn near T3.  Not bad for $50 a month.

On 2013-03-02, josephkk <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> The "CMOS" has long ago gone to flash onboard the southbridge chip.
>

Last week I was able to reset the CMOS on a modern (2012) board by shorting
the battery contacts. I can't say for sure that Foxconn wasn't
emulating CMOS by detecting the short or the loss of clock power. but
It sure behaved like it was actual CMOS.

I had configured the bord in such a way that the onbord display
hardware was inactive and I needed to get it back, a brief visual
search of the board didn't reveal a CMOS reset jumper.

-- 
&#9858;&#9859; 100% natural