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Night Owl 6
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Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso
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007a
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ATTCLK.DOC
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Text File
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1991-10-18
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6KB
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265 lines
Continued Clock/Calendar Functionality for AT&T PC 6300
What's wrong with the AT&T PC 6300? Very little! In this era
of "major strides" in personal computer technology, the AT&T PC 6300 I
bought in 1985 has passed the test of time. With disk accelerator
software and a little extra memory above 640K, my machine seems to run
anything I want, and it still does it very well.
The only notable incompatibility has been the lack of a good
clock/calendar driver so you can boot up with anybody's DOS without
having to enter the current time and date.
Standard DOS versions provide a way to fix all this and the
accompanying device driver does just that. It works with version 2.11
thorugh version 5.0 of DOS. It can be AT&T DOS, MS-DOS or PC-DOS. It
only works, however, on an AT&T PC 6300 machine. The original clock
chip and ROM-BIOS must be present for proper function.
**** WARNING! ******* WARNING! ******** WARNING! ******** WARNING! ****
** DO NOT INSTALL THE DRIVER ON ANYTHING BUT AN AT&T PC6300 MACHINE. **
** USE ON OTHER MACHINES MAY CAUSE LOSS OF DATA, AND WORSE. **
*********** WARNING! ******************* WARNING! *********************
Installing the driver. Edit the CONFIG.SYS file on your hard
disk so it includes the line:
device=attclk.sys /1988
Now copy the file ATTCLK.SYS to the root directory of the hard disk.
When you re-boot the system (or turn it off and then on), the driver
installs and initializes itself.
Usefulness. It allows use of dates beyond 12/31/91 which the
original AT&T (Phoenix) driver could not do. It passes time and date to
DOS at start-up and anytime you need it, such as when you create or
write to a file.
After start-up it keeps only about 290 bytes of code resident,
saving precious memory for your applications programs. And it doesn't
care what brand of standard DOS you are using.
How it works. If your BIOS and clock chip are functioning
normally, you must set the date and time once after re-booting
(Ctrl-Alt-Del) with the new driver. Use the DOS time and date commands
for this. You will see the current date and time whenever you
subsequently turn on the computer.
There are three quirks which are due to the design of the clock
chip and the AT&T ROM-BIOS:
(1) You must set the date to the new year once every January.
The clock chip can't advance the year at midnight December 31.
(2) Whenever you set the time or date the seconds registers of
the clock chip will be reset to zero. To avoid inaccuracies it is
necessary to enter the new date or time just as the second-hand of your
time source passes zero.
(3) The clock/calendar chip functions normally over an eight-
year time span. This is true despite the fact that DOS allows you to
set any date between 1980 and 2099. At start-up then, the driver
interprets the current hardware setting as one of the years in the
eight-year period beginning with the year you specified in CONFIG.SYS.
The demo version of the driver will allow your clock to function
normally after 12/31/91 for several more months. After 3/31/92,
however, you should reset the year to 1991 in order to continue tracking
month, day, hours, minutes, seconds and tenth-seconds accurately. By
comparison, the original AT&T driver requires you to do this beginning
on 1-1-92 since the last valid date for their driver is 12-31-91.
The fully functional version of this driver--which you can
purchase cheap--allows any legal DOS date (1/1/80 to 12/31/2099) to be
set. And, by changing the CONFIG.SYS file appropriately, it can
recognize any legal DOS date at start-up, as well.
This software is distributed "as is" without any implied or
expressed warranty. Due to the low price, absolutely no liability can
be assumed by the author, other than replacement of media damaged in
the mail.
The following are registered trademarks of the following:
IBM and PC-DOS International Business Machines Corp.
MS-DOS Microsoft Corporation
AT&T American Telephone & Telegraph Corp.
Personal Computer 6300 product of AT&T Corp.
Registration and License. This code is copyrighted and is
distributed by the author as a "demo". While it has limited
functionality, it does not self-destruct or stop working on any
particular date. After the period for which the demo driver is valid,
you continue to get accurate times but you will need to set the year
back to 1991. To receive a registered copy of the driver, with full
functionality as described above, send $18.50 to:
Anton Dahlman
3325 Palo Verde Ave. #101
Long Beach, CA 90808
Registration after 3/31/92 will cost $28.50. An on-screen clock
program (an 8K TSR written in C) will be furnished free to all pur-
chasers of the fully functional driver. The freebie TSR keeps accurate
time and is designed for the AT&T PC 6300's faster clock tick speed.
REGISTRATION INFO:
Name _________________________________________
Address ___________________________________________________
City ____________________________ State _____ Zip _____________
Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of your fully functional driver.
Source code is available for non-commercial use only. Send $20.
Commercial vendors may write to the above address for further
information. The author will be happy to produce similar drivers for
other manufacturers' 8-year clock chips with a 1-2 week lead time. Send
technical data (port numbers & data typing) along with your proposal.