XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-10   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Fri, 1/23/2026 2:06 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:   
   > On Fri, 23 Jan 2026 20:17:11 +1100, Daniel70 wrote:   
   >   
   > [snip]   
   >   
   >> Having been in the Army, where you could get into trouble for not being   
   >> where you are supposed to be WHEN you are supposed to be there .... so I   
   >> usually have my Car clock set three to five minutes fast .... you know.   
   >> just in case!! (even having been out of the Army over thirty years)   
   >   
   > I used to know someone who did that. I'd rather set my watch RIGHT and do   
   > my own thinking, and leave on time.   
   >   
   > BTW, I get tired of hearing "fast" and "slow" used improperly, when the   
   > problem has nothing to do with speed.   
   >   
      
   There is the frequency adjustment of the reference oscillator,   
   to avoid first order drift. On typical time pieces, this   
   runs at 32768.0000 Hz (above human hearing). A watchmaker may   
   have a suitable instrument while working to correct the value.   
   A trimmer capacitor is inside the watch, to make tweaks.   
   The RTC in a personal computer is missing this adjustment.   
      
   And there is the purposeful register offset, to arrive   
   at destinations ahead of an appointment. The register   
   could be adjusted ahead, behind, or nominal.   
      
        "I set my watch ahead, so I will always be on time for appointments"   
      
         [well, not absolutely always, depends on paragraph 1]   
      
   Good time pieces are temperature compensated, as the ambient   
   temperature changes, the tempco of some of the elements are   
   made to cancel, and it gives the impression the device   
   is temperature invariant (which it is not). Scientific American   
   used to have articles about this, in the Amateur Scientist section.   
   Some cars have had excellent temperature compensated time clock pieces.   
      
   There is one computer design, which cannot tell time under any circumstances.   
   The NVidia NForce2, if operated with a non-canonical BCLK, would go nuts   
   and the time could not be nulled, even with NTP cranked way up to adjust   
   it. The MCP chip was fine at 66MHz, 100MHz, 133MHz sort of thing, but if you   
   selected 75MHz or 129MHz, that caused the time to jump all over the place   
   from reading to reading. I don't think NVidia ever admitted to that,   
   but for the people playing with that, they got the entertainment value   
   for sure.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)