Re: 10/01/04 The clock on my computer keeps losing time!

by Aero1 - 10/1/04 5:58 AM

In Reply to: 10/01/04 The clock on my computer keeps losing time! by Lee Koo (ADMIN) Moderator CNET staff

Electronic clocks are slow/fast because the crystal oscillators are slow/fast. This is mainly a matter of the accuracy of physical crystal resonator itself. The other main causes of frequency drift are temperature and aging. Accurate oscillators are most always in a temperature controlled oven. Your wrist watch, for example, is stabilized by your pretty consistent body temperature, etc.

It is possible to adjust crystal oscillators very slightly generally by placing a small variable capacitor across the crystal (or an inductor in series with it), but no PC I've seen has such an adjustment.

So there's nothing to be done but to live with the inaccuracy. What I do is run a time keeping app (eg, Clockwise) that resets my clock every night to an on-line atomic standard so that I don't have to worry about it.

And that's all, folks.

w3, an old hardware engineer