Syncing ST/STE clock with host

[Count]

Is it possible to synchronize the clock of an ST/STE with the host to have the current time? As these machines don't have native RTC, I would like to use an AUTO folder programme, for example, as I used to do back in 1990 to read the RTC of the attached hard disk host adapter. Maybe Hatari offers a native feature I could use. Unfortunately I couldn't find any information in the docs.

[czietz]

Switch Hatari to MegaST (or MegaSTE) and you get an emulated RTC that is sync'ed to the host.

[Count]

That's what I am doing so far. But I cannot run a Mega STE with TOS 1.62, for example.

[DoG]

Run Mega STe with TOS 2.06.

[simonsunnyboy]

Anything requiring TOS 1.62 will not care about a clock anyway being games and demos.

[Count]

I just want to ensure compatibility. But I think I can solve this problem with a host process (e.g. shell script) which writes the time to a file every two seconds and an AUTO folder program that reads this file.

[Eero Tamminen]

, I would like to use an AUTO folder programme, for example, as I used to do back in 1990 to read the RTC of the attached hard disk host adapter. Maybe Hatari offers a native feature I could use. Unfortunately I couldn't find any information in the docs.

HW interface to ST real time clock devices differs from the RTC used in Mega ST and newer machines, and nobody has developed support for former. Mainly because they need both HW & auto-folder SW, there's no TOS version supporting them directly. I don't how well /whether the actual HW interfaces were even documented, or whether any of the SW came with (freely distributable) sources.

If you would still like NatFeats host time API, send you API spec proposal to hatari-devel mailing list (some patches to implement and test it would help too).

[Count]

I think that isn't necessary anymore. My "hack" described above works pretty well.

[tzok]

As these machines don't have native RTC, I would like to use an AUTO folder programme, for example, as I used to do back in 1990 to read the RTC of the attached hard disk host adapter.

That's not true, these machines do have RTC, it is only not battery backed up.

Using the inbuilt RTC is also a little bit tricky, because the main clock is GEMDOS software RTC, but XBIOS queries the hardware RTC each time current time info is requested by GEMDOS function. The problem is the hardware RTC is not Y2K compliant.

Please read more here: https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/forum/viewt ... 281#p28281

Based upon that information STeven has adopted the host clock synchronization in STEeM SSE:

[Eero Tamminen]

Originally emulated Hatari clock was synched to host, but that breaks some (ST) demos [1]. So, nowadays ST & STE clocks aren't synced to host, only emulated Mega and TT/Falcon models are (which have RTC + battery).

[1] Host clock can slightly change when synched to network time, and there's anyway some run-time drift between host clock and what's being emulated, at least when emulation is speeded up or slowed down.

[charles]

should be able to sync because st timer uses delay or pulse mode