Weird problem with clock on A500

[cpfuture]

Hi,

I've got an A500 Plus that's giving me some strange behaviour. The clock seems to jump back in time every so often. I first noticed this when some apps respond to this. E.g. the 'time left' indicator when writing an ADF to floppy with Tracksaver would suddenly jump from 00:00:21 to 99:99:99! Also, in HippoPlayer I can see the play time of a song suddenly jump back to 00:00 and start counting again.

Now, when I got this A500+ it had some battery leakage and I cleaned that up. At first the battery seemed to be functional, but after leaving the A500+ off for more than 24 hours it would lose track of time.

So today installed a brand spanking new battery and tested that it works OK. I saved the date with 'SetClock save'. Then I changed the system clock to an incorrect date. A 'Setclock Load' gave me back the correct time so I assume the battery is OK. Unfortunately the system clock still exhibits the same strange behaviour.

I guess something is wrong with the clock chip itself. I've investigated a little further and it seems every minute or two the clock keeps jumping back to the initial date it got from setclock load. Anyone recognize this behaviour?  I suspect the motherboard did get damaged after all by the battery leakage and is causing this problem. Too bad... Looks like I'll need a new A500+ mobo I guess......

 :-(

[cpfuture]

Update: The problem only seems to occur when running with a Kickstart 1.3 ROM that's on the M-Tec AT-500 IDE controller sidecar I have. When I switch back to the onboard 2.04 Kickstart ROM I have no clock problems anymore.... Hmmm...

If this new battery does manage to keep time properly I'll be happy enough. I'll be ditching the external M-Tec IDE controller anyway for my brand spanking new Viper 530 that should be arriving shortly!

 :-D

[Zac67]

The clock used in operating mode has nothing to do with the RTC chip that you changed the battery of. The buffered RTC is just read on powerup and written to with Setclock save.

The clock that your 500 has problems with resides in one of the CIAs - check if swapping the two 8520s has any effect.

[cpfuture]

Well, so far the problem only seems to surface when I use the 1.3 ROM that's on the M-TEC IDE controller. I'll try your suggestion though and see if swapping the CIAs helps. I have enough spare A500's lying around. Thanks!

[Methuselas]

Mate, where did you *FIND* a Viper. I've been looking for one, for a *LONG* time.  :-?

[cpfuture]

Mate, where did you *FIND* a Viper. I've been looking for one, for a *LONG* time.

eBay   :-D

I'm currently awaiting the package's arrival, which is all the more agonizing now that the holidays are upon us, due to the delays that'll cause.

[Zac67]

400 EUR!?!?  :-o
That's clearly insane!

[cpfuture]

My sanity is perfectly well, thanks.

Last time a Viper 530 was up on eBay it went for roughly the same price and they're really scarce (and I really want one)
  :-)