RealTime8 (minutes not counting)

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Yo folks. Help wanted.

 

Strange things are happening with my RT-8. Suddenly the minutes are "stuck" (so are the hours) while the seconds are counting o.k. This way the clock always stays at the time I set it. My BBS doesn't really like that as it never does it's events anymore (events are triggered every hour).

 

Of course I checked (and changed to be sure) the batteries but it didn't help.

 

I have absolutely no technical info about the RT-8 and I've no idea where to start my search.

[Marius]

Hi Fox,

 

As you'll probably remember i have had same and strange issues with RTime8 (the sunmark version) too and whatever I tried the problem did not go away.

 

Does your RT8 clock runs fine as long as it is not connected to your atari? Mine did. As long as it was connected, it started to act very weird.

 

That is why I started to use your foxtime.cmd to update the bbs clock after each 'call' and event cycle (in fact I added the code of foxtime to the waitcall) and that was for me the only way of keeping the right BBS time.

 

Good luck on it!

Marius

[Fox-1 / mnx]

He Marius.

 

It's even stranger. The clock has just started to run again. Problem is that I have no idea why and for how long. I know that foxtime.cmd will probably work (I'm sure of that! :-) ) but it's somehow problematic right now cable wise. If the problem doesn't seem to be solved I'll have to set-up a laptop to keep track of time/date using APE/foxtime.cmd.

[+bf2k+]

He Marius.

 

It's even stranger. The clock has just started to run again. Problem is that I have no idea why and for how long. I know that foxtime.cmd will probably work (I'm sure of that! :-) ) but it's somehow problematic right now cable wise. If the problem doesn't seem to be solved I'll have to set-up a laptop to keep track of time/date using APE/foxtime.cmd.

 

You have probably already done this, but I had one do the same thing years ago and solved it by cleaning contacts on the cart and cart slot. Don't ask me why... I don't know.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

You have probably already done this, but I had one do the same thing years ago and solved it by cleaning contacts on the cart and cart slot.

Did that too, indeed. Cleaned the contacts with a fibre-brush from both the cartridge and the Black Box where the RT-8 in plugged in. It's weird that the problem went away by itself. Kind of fuzzy logic :-)

[Marius]

You have probably already done this, but I had one do the same thing years ago and solved it by cleaning contacts on the cart and cart slot.

Did that too, indeed. Cleaned the contacts with a fibre-brush from both the cartridge and the Black Box where the RT-8 in plugged in. It's weird that the problem went away by itself. Kind of fuzzy logic :-)

 

And you are sure you are not using:

 

1) a harddisk

 

2) a blackbox

 

3) a rt8 cart

 

4) a Power Supply

 

5) an atari

 

6) whatever part

 

you got from TXG?

 

If one of the options came from TXG, it might explain things...

[Fox-1 / mnx]

1) a harddisk

 

2) a blackbox

 

3) a rt8 cart

 

4) a Power Supply

 

5) an atari

 

6) whatever part

 

1) Still that same ancient Imprimis 676MB SCSI-I drive that was ripped from even more ancient Sun hardware.

 

2) Bought by STack/SAG (Ernest and Bo) (CSS reseller back then).

 

3) See 2

 

4) Ripped from a very old "Bull Micral" Intel 80286 system.

 

5) Bought from a member of BRAC (back when "mnx" was named "ftf"). My original bought-new-in-store 130XE was fried (literally!) as you know.

 

6) The whatever parts will be a SIO2PC interface (home built), skull with LEDs attached to the Black Box I/O (home built), 2-rechner interface (from ABBUC) and a dual-mechanic XF551 (non-working old stock Atari Benelux, EPROM built in afterwards).

 

I guess I'm safe.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Update:

 

At the meanwhile I found back my scanned (populated) PCB and the schematic of the RT-8. The manufacturer of the used RTC (M3002) sent me a copy of the data sheet. Just in case I need it :-)

 

Edited May 12, 2009 by Fox-1 / mnx

[Fox-1 / mnx]

The problem has returned. Re-soldered the whole PCB to be sure it wasn't a simple thing like a bad trace or something but it didn't help.

 

I decided to set-up APE on my Win2000 server to read the time/date from using a SIO2PC interface with a BBS tool I wrote some time ago. APE (Dos version) did run o.k. so I started to make a new serial cable for my SIO2PC as the one I had seemed too short. Wasted some time with that as I couldn't connect it as my server only has 1 serial port which was already taken by my BBS for the Modem/Telnet conversion! Searched the whole house for a PCI adapter with some serial ports on it. I ended up with a zillion ISA versions and zero PCI ones. Only 2 choices left: plugging in an ISA adapter into a PCI slot with a hammer, or pulling out an old laptop with a serial port. The 2nd choice looked like a winning move and it's up and running.

 

Sooo, it requires a running Win98 system and a running Win2000 system to keep a BBS running on a 130XE...

 

 

Wanted: another solution