System time synchronization | HW problem?

[Derick Centeno]

Hi again Alex:
As usual a few hours of respite provides a different view of things. 
Thought I would share them with you.  The comments here should be
considered as an addition to what I already stated earlier.

On Sun, 2005-01-02 at 14:45, Derick Centeno wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-01-02 at 05:58, Alexander Holst wrote:
> > Hi everybody,
> > 
> > I have YDL 3.0.1 installed on a 266MHz Wallstreet and encounter some
> > strange problems:
> > 
> > Everything works fine - exept the system time is running about twice as
> > fast as it should. I genreal this means that in one hour, the system
> > time advances roughly two hours (not bad if you want to leave work
> > earlier than others ;).
> > 
> > Now, I got the Wallstreet from a friend, as both serial ports are
> > defective (modem does not respond & no printer connected to the printer 
> > port appears appears in the chooser). Could that somehow be related to
> > the clock problem?
> > 
First get Mactools Deluxe for OS9 and follow the instructions and run a
complete check of your hardware and software.  Mactools can check for
software conflicts; it may interest you that it is NOT unheard of that
the problems you think you have with the serial ports might be due to
system/software conflicts! 

You should be able to get Mactools Deluxe for OS9 from Other World
Computing(OWC) at www.macsales.com.  The good thing is that Mactools is
REALLY thorough testing hardware (RAM, ROM, serial ports, etc.) and as
OS9 is DEAD it is the best tool you can have for your Mac for testing
and discovering what the real hardware problems are instead of
guessing.  Even educated and experienced guessing should be avoided when
possible, use Mactools, Mactools is your friend.  

Mactools for OS X is also a fine product,but I am sure you have verified
what I said earlier that the MHz your system is running at is NOT at the
optimal levels recommended by Apple.  So Mactools is not going to change
that.  Mactools for OS9 can check that your CPU is running at optimal
levels however.  Consider that in Linux (and YDL) other than fsck there
are many powerful and less friendly tools in Linux which also can repair
and destroy your hardware.  Using Mactools from the Mac to test the
hardware within OS9 and getting reports and explanations which are
understandable (as opposed to cryptic) will be a BOON, as it can help
your hardware stay in trim for Linux which has no trouble running at
200MHz or even slower.

Remember that as OS9 is dead, the only current software you will be able
to have will be from whatever you use in Linux or recompile from source
(if that application was not included in YDL).

> > What is the reference the Linux kernel uses to obtain its internal
> > system time clock cycles. To avoid misunderstandings, the HW clock works
> > perfectly well - so under OS9 I do not encounter this problem. Funny
> > enough, under OSX 10.3.x (via XPostFacto) the symptom is exactly the
> > opposite: the kernel detects a CPU with 677 MHz (sometimes even up to
> > 1,7GHz!) which leads to the fact that the OSX System time runs too slow,
> > and all animations such as the appearance of the dock, are horrendously
> > slow.
By "reference" I understand you to mean "device" or "tool"; the easiest
is the Date & Time "Control Panel" available from within the System
Settings menu which itself appears when you click upon the YellowDog
Icon.  Remember to select the City and Timezone, not just the time.

The particular problem may be due to you booting into Linux from OSX on
a slow machine.  Also if you are not using BootX, but yaboot, there
could be difficulties as yaboot is intended for New World machines and
yours is definitely Old World, both of them you wrote about anyway.  So
BootX is the best way to boot into YDL, and the best OS to run BootX
from, is from OS9, when using Old World machines.

If you find completely convert to a modern Mac with YDL pre-installed
(this is available from TerraSoft) and Apple allows them to do so such
that the Apple warranty is not voided then there will be no reason to
use BootX as from then on you will use yaboot and OSX will be happy with
all that RAM, HD real estate and CPU speed.

Best wishes....