[BC] clock software

[Sherrod Munday]

On Friday 03 February 2006 07:15, John Vodenik wrote:
> Seems to me that back before the year end, someone put out a note about
> some software that would keep your PC locked to WWV or something. ?Anybody
> remember what that program was? ?I am looking for something to lock my
> automation PC to either WWV or GPS.

If you're talking for a Windows box, you can always try 'Dimension 4' 
software.

The current version is available at http://www.thinkman.com/

It's free for personal use, but to use it in a for-profit environment it costs 
$10 per license (i.e. per machine).  Site licenses are available.

That being said, a prior version *IS* freeware.  And frankly, it does 
everything we need it to, so we run the prior version 4.1 instead of the 
current version.

There are many copies of 4.1 still out on the 'Net -- search for 
'd4time41.zip' and grab a copy from an archive site.  (I couldn't find it on 
thinkman's site directly.)

Here's one site that has a link to a prior version.
http://webinstituteforteachers.org/resources/software/TIME/

If you are using a *nix box, a few variants of 'ntp' (Network Time Protocol) 
software are available.

All the *nix clients and D4 rely on communicating with a number of 
network-connected time servers.  The ntp system is designed to account for 
latencies, jitter, etc. and is quite good.

To contrast them, the *nix clients apply a continual drift factor to the 
system clock, so that the time is always accurate.  The D4 program 'steps' 
the clock to whatever the time server reports *when* the program checks with 
the time server.  That is, if the time update interval is set to 15 minutes, 
every 15 minutes your PC clock will "jump" to the server's time, which can 
cause some weird results if you wait too long between updates.
-- 
Sherrod Munday <smunday at srnradio.com>
Technical Director
Salem Radio Network    (972) 831-1920