[ntp:questions] Re: Good GPS for attic?

Maarten Wiltink maarten at kittensandcats.net
Wed Feb 16 12:30:52 UTC 2005


"David Schwartz" <davids at webmaster.com> wrote in message
news:cuv9q1$pg1$1 at nntp.webmaster.com...
> "John Pettitt" <jpp at cloudview.com> wrote in message
> news:8F6Pd.6422$m31.77104 at typhoon.sonic.net...

>> On my home net I set up GPS time because I wanted to see how cheaply
>> I could do it ($350 emachines computer, $85 GPS18 LV, freebsd and
>> about $5 of connectors).   I could have done it for under $120 with
>> a used 486 box.
>
>     You need at least a Pentium because the '486 does not have a TSC
> (instruction cycle counter). The TSC is absolutely essential to keeping
> accurate time.

That's not my experience. I have two, usually lightly loaded, 486 hosts
with ancient to positively fossilised Linux versions and they run NTP
really quite well. Unless I saturate my internet connection, I have
offsets below 1ms nearly all of the time. One runs off my ISP's four
peered NTP servers, the other off four pool servers.

A Pentium running FreeBSD didn't do nearly so well.

Groetjes,
Maarten Wiltink





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