[ntp:questions] help with setting up NTP on windows with a USB GPS

[David J Taylor]

"jack" <> wrote in message 
news:72491452-f89d-454b-8bcc-f945c825915f at j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
> David,
>
> I would like to add that, from my own experiences, the GPS has to be
> configured to output $GPRMC sentences only. Otherwise the PPS part of
> NTP doesn't work.

Good point - added.

> I have a related question: given that my system clock is synced to an
> external GPS within ms, how do I read time that gives me the same
> accuracy? When I tried to read time at 60Hz, I found that the times
> returned are not periodic, sometimes even the same.
>
> Jack

That was my point about using Windows!  By default, the clock only returns 
new values at either 16ms or 10ms intervals - depending on the OS version. 
You can enable the Multimedia timers which increase the clock frequency, 
but I can't remember off-hand whether that increases the read-out 
precision in /all/ versions of Windows, or just Vista and Windows-7.  Use 
the timeBeginPeriod and timeEndPeriod functions, but be aware that 
switching these functions on and off can result in timekeeping transients, 
so with NTP and pre-Vista systems it's best to use NTP to keep the MM 
timer enabled.
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd757624%28VS.85%29.aspx
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd743611%28VS.85%29.aspx

This source looks interesting for XP, but old:
  http://www.lochan.org/2005/keith-cl/useful/win32time.html

On my XP system, with the MM timer enabled, I see a resolution for a 
timeGetTime call of just under a millisecond.  I wrote a small program 
here:

  http://www.satsignal.eu/software/net.htm#PCClockTiming

Cheers,
David