• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

PC Clocks and Automation

R

Radiopronouncer

We have three computers running Digilink Xtreme. Two of them are Dell computers with Windows 7 and one is a Dell running Windows XP. The automation network does not have access to the internet. The two Windows 7 machines have clocks that drift so much that they start being too far off for the time sync from the network to synchronize the clocks. From that point, they rapidly drift wildly off. Last night, one was 20 or 30 seconds off. Not good when it does a time command to go to network news 20 seconds early.

I've put the program About Time on them and set them up to sync with the Windows XP computer. This may work, at least until that computer is replaced with a Windows 7 PC. But, Arrakis doesn't like additional programs running on Digilink computers.

Any suggestions, other than putting this network on the internet?
 
Well true time accuracy would come from the internet unless you can hook up the PC to an atomic clock. You know I have the same problem with my win 7 machine. Left unattended it will drift a minute and a half. I wonder if its a problem with win 7 machines.
 
What's your budget look like? A GPS clock from Radio Systems with an NTP output will work fine.
 
Do you have access to a network closure? If so you could use that to sync Xtreme each hour. We run a stop set prior to a network program at the top of the hour. Once the clocks are synced they drift very little and receive another sync the next hour. Xtreme lets you offset the sync so that it doesn't mess the timing up at the top of the hour.
 
We have two subnets, one with Internet access and one without for the automation computers. I have an ancient computer running Linux that can see both subnets but doesn't pass any traffic between the two. On it I have an NTP server set up that the automation computers will sync to every 4 hours. (We don't take any network sources that need exact timing.) The Linux NTP server syncs on the internet-connected side to whatever the server pool is for the US.
 
wking601 said:
Do you have access to a network closure? If so you could use that to sync Xtreme each hour. We run a stop set prior to a network program at the top of the hour. Once the clocks are synced they drift very little and receive another sync the next hour. Xtreme lets you offset the sync so that it doesn't mess the timing up at the top of the hour.
Click to expand...

Yes, we have network closures for time sync. The Windows XP computer sets its clock with a time sync closure. The older Windows 7 computer deals with a format that does not use time commands to record programs or to join a program at a set time. The new Windows 7 computer runs a news/talk format with plenty of hard breaks, network joins, etc. It must be accurate.

All of these computers are connected to the same network time sync closure. They are receiving the time sync closures. They just drift so rapidly that they sometimes get outside of the time sync window within an hour. Once that happens, they are adrift in time.
 
So far, it looks like running About Time on the Windows 7 computers is working. Thanks for the ideas. I'll look into implementing one of these so that all three PCs aren't dependent on that one Windows XP machine for time syncs. In fact, the production room computer syncs to it with About Time, also. So that's a total of four PCs relying on it to have the correct time.
 
Your post is a little ambiguous. Are you saying that each machine on the automation network individually receives the network closure? Or are you saying that only one machine receives the network closure and that the remainder of the machines time sync to this machine?

AboutTime is a nice program and is standard on iMediatouch machines. The program uses very little resources, so I wouldn't get too concerned about it causing problems on the machines.

If only one machine receives the network closure: AboutTime works as both a time server and time client. Confgure it as a time server on the machine that receives the network closure; configure the other machines as time clients. Configure the time clients to sync to the time server (machine with network closure). You'll probably need to use a static IP address on the time server machine.

If that isn't what you're looking for, post again with exactly what you're trying to accomplish.
 
All three Digilink computers have always been connected to the same time sync contact closure. All was fine until two of the PCs were replaced with Windows 7 PCs.

The Windows 7 PCs drifted in time so rapidly that they would get outside of the time sync window within an hour and the time syncs, which were being received and logged, wouldn't keep the PCs at the right time.

I am now using About Time to sync the two Windows 7 computers with the remaining Windows XP computer, which is acting as a time server. This is working. The Windows 7 PCs are still connected to the network time sync closure.

This may work fine. But, when we eventually replace that PC with a Windows 7 PC, I anticipate the same problem.
 
Okay, that's strange that only the W7 boxes are drifting so much. I don't know enough about that OS to give suggestions. My last computer with clock drift had a failing MB, but that probably isn't your problem since both machines have drift.

One of my stations uses a PCI card to maintain precise clock accuracy but there is probably a simpler solution for you.

One thing to keep in mind regarding AboutTime is that sometimes the server will show "busy" and prevent the clients from syncing. If that occurs, go into your services on the XP box and disable windows time service (W32time).
 
You can also sync time without any software by using the NET TIME command. If you have ever done any DOS/command line stuff its pretty easy to do. You just make a .bat file with the syntax net time \\timesrv /set /yes where \\timesrv is the computer name or IP (192.168.x.x usually) of the system you want to grab the time from on your LAN.
 
In my 20+ years IT experience, clock drift usually is attributed to very low-level calls to hardware interrupts. For example, I had a server that was losing time at an alarming rate (1 minute every 30 minutes). A program called Process Monitor showed an increase amount of CPU usage for "Hardware Interrupts". Turned out to be a USB-to-PS2 Keyboard/Mouse converter. Once that was unplugged, CPU usage returned to normal, and clock drift ceased.

Even in today's operating systems, the system clock is still driven by the internal timer (fire up the old BASIC programming language, and you can watch how the clock relates to the timer), which is driven by a timer IC (crystals on some boards). Hardware that highly depends on clock (serial ports, PS2 ports, legacy interfaces) can really screw with the timer.

Watch your system clock in BIOS. It's the lowest-level form of clock (without programming). If it's running slow - you have a hardware problem.

Just my experience. YMMV.
 
Haven't dug into to it yet as to why some are randomly off +10 minutes. See the errors on the server logs so I go & fix 'em. XP & Windows 7 machines. Could be they get synced to a server somewhere that has a problem.
 
That's a good comment about the interrupts. Makes sense. I talked to my IT guy about this issue, and he agrees that interrupts could be the problem.

If you can't find or fix the source of the problem, have a look at this freeware program. My IT guy has used it with good results. It compares the system clock to the real time clock on the machine and synchronizes as needed.

It may be worth a try, but I wonder whether the program will keep readjusing the time after it syncs to an Internet time server and defeat its purpose. Don't know. And I don't know whether it works on W7... YMMV

ClockMon
http://www.softdevlabs.com/ClockMon/ClockMon.html

Good luck
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom