Starting today, 1st of June 1997, and with this program, you will always
and only get HTML program documentations from me.
Read this for an explanation.
The following list of "anchors" takes you to the respective
paragraphs. The headline of the paragraph is an "anchor" back to
this list of contents, so you can pick a topic, read it, come back here and
pick another topic.
This software is FreeWare. Here is an explanation
, to find out, what this means.
RealTimeCheck is a watchdog for your system time. Just like my earlier
program RealTimeWatch it checks, if your hardware clock has been changed
since the last reboot. It manages this by saving the time into a file and
reloading it at the next boot-up. If the difference is more than one week, it
assumes, your clock has been changed by accident.
The main difference to RealTimeWatch is, that RealTimeCheck does not stay
in memory, when the check has been done. If everything is ok, it just
terminates. If not, it presents you a font sensitive GadTools user interface,
where you can restore your hardware and software clock.
This change makes it possible to check your clock even on systems with a
VGA-only monitor. RealTimeWatch could bring up a PAL or NTSC screen,
RealTimeCheck takes the Workbench, or whatever public screen you wish.
It is also possible, to use RealTimeWatch in addition to RealTimeCheck.
Both programs tolerate each other, as both are system conforming !
You need
You should have
After four months of intensive testing with RealTimeWatch I considered the
perpetual check of the hardware clock as unnecessary. Every manipulation of
the hardware clock in my system happened, when I switched my computer off.
The next time, I switched it on, the clock was corrupted, but not by any
software. I suspect, this behaviour results from device line filters, which
generate a peak in the switching power supply at turning the computer off or
on. Maybe it is just a low-voltage situation, when the line voltage drops at
switching a high power consumption device on.
Most interesting part of RealTimeCheck is it's user interface. I do not
like storage monsters like MUI, although it is very good at it's job. But I
cannot use a huge layout machine for such a small program. My own layout
system takes about 6 kb, including gadget descriptions, and was originally
intended for non-proportional fonts. It turned out to work nicely with
proportional fonts, too.
Furthermore, the user interface is tested starting with a 640 x 200 pixel
screen and topaz 8 and 11. It also works on my Cybervision 1024 x 768 pixel
screen with CGTimes 48 or Courier 24. I have tested everything as good as
possible, if you don't overdo your screen layout, it always works fine. By
default, it takes the default (screen) font, you specify with your font
preferences, which is always non-proportional.
I only supplied a 68000 version this time. Most of the time, RealTimeCheck
is waiting for events, so optimization is useless.
First extract the RTCheck.lha archive to disk. This consumes about 100 kb
of disk space, or RAM, if you extract to RAM Disk. A drawer will be created,
if you use the "x" command of LHA.
If you extracted to RAM, copy the drawer to a disk, which is always
present at boot-up (boot floppy-disk, or any harddisk). DO NOT COPY SINGLE
FILES, ALWAYS PUT RealTimeCheck IN A SEPARATE DRAWER. DO NOT USE THIS DRAWER
FOR ANY OTHER PROGRAM. This is, because it makes uninstalling the easiest
thing on earth. And, more important: RealTimeCheck creates two files, one
prefs-file for window position and pubscreen name, and one logfile for the
last checking date.
Open the RealTimeCheck drawer. Pick the icon named
"RTCheckRemoteControl" and drag it to your WBStartup drawer on your
BOOT DISK. Select "Icon/Information" from the Workbench menu. Make
sure, the "RTCheckRemoteControl" icon is checked, first. DO NOT
DOUBLECLICK. If you did, get rid of the error requester, then only click
ONCE. Now you should see something like this:
Fill in the "Default Tool" field (named "Standardprogramm"
here) with the complete path to the RealTimeCheck executable. You can even
set the other tooltypes now. For this, see How to Use.
When you are done, click on "Save" ("Speichern").
That's a simple one. Delete the remote control icon in the wbstartup
drawer. Then delete the RealTimeCheck drawer. Make sure, you do not use this
drawer for any other program, first ! If you differ from the installation,
you have to deinstall it on your own, then !
First you should set the tooltypes. There are five of them:
PUBSCREEN: Fill in your favourite public screen's name, if you
like. It defaults to "Workbench", if you do not set it. Be aware,
that it only accepts names with less than 40 characters !
FONTNAME: Fill in your favourite font's name IN FULL. You have to
write "topaz.font", only "topaz" is not enough ! It
defaults to the screen font you set with your "Font" preferences
program.
FONTSIZE: Fill in the desired size of your favourite font. It
defaults to the size of the font you set in your preferences.
ACTION: Recognizes two keywords - "CHECK" only checks
the time and does nothing, if everything is ok. "EDIT" always opens
the editing window. If you don't specify "ACTION", it defaults to
"EDIT" !
REMOTECONTROL: This may only be set in the remote control project
icon. It's value MUST be "TRUE", to be recognized. In this case,
the tooltypes are taken from the remote control project icon. If not set to
"TRUE", or left out completely, the tooltypes are taken from the
executables tool icon ! Better not touch this !
If you want to use RealTimeCheck from Shell, the arguments are exactly the
same, except "REMOTECONTROL", which makes no sense in a Shell.
When you are ready setting up the tooltypes, you should doubleclick the
"RTCheckRemoteControl" icon. You MUST receive one of the following
requester messages then.
You will see this message the first time you start RealTimeCheck. As there
is no logfile at that time, it assumes time is zero (1-Jan-78). Click on
"Edit time", then on "Save", or "Use" to create
a logfile (more on that later). After that, you will only see this message,
if you didn't start RealTimeCheck for more than one week, or if your hardware
clock has been corrupted.
This message only appears, if the system clock differs from the hardware
clock for more than one minute. Some programs switch off the interrupts for
a short time, thus switching off the system time counter (NOT the hardware
clock, of course). If this is done often, you get a considerable time
difference.
The first line, Logfile, contains the time saved in your logfile.
The second line, Hardware, shows the current time of the hardware clock.
This time gets updated every second !
The third line, System, shows the system time, and is also updated every
second.
With the fourth line, Manually, you can set the time by hand. It accepts
the same format like the "C:Date" command. Example: 1-feb-97 22:33.
Note, that it's case insensitive and doesn't need the seconds specified.
However, BOTH date and time must be filled in !
The fifth line, the cycle gadget, allows you to select, which time is
going to be used to set the clock. You can select from all of the above.
The three button gadgets at the bottom let you choose from saving the time
into the hardware clock with "Save", or only using the time as the
system time with "Use", or doing nothing, "Cancel".
Furthermore, if you select "Save" or "Use", the hardware
clock's time is saved to disk.
Last minute extension: With the "Copy" buttons
you can copy the respective date into an internal buffer (not the clipboard),
and then paste it into the "Manually" gadget by simply pressing the
"Paste" button !
This message appears, if you selected "Manually" from the cycle
gadget, and the date, you typed in, could not be converted to anything that
makes sense. Read this message, understand it, click on "OK" and
try again !
Well, that's all you should come across. If anything unexpected happens,
like a corrupted clock after using RealTimeCheck, make sure, you read this
manual again and more carefully. If the program even causes a crash, inform
me immediately ! Your system configuration and maybe an Enforcer output would
be nice.
What happened so far:
"I am my sister !" (Frank Zappa: Michael Jackson about himself)
"And Germaine is a negro !" (Frank Zappa: Michael Jackson about his brother)
Any further development depends on YOU ! Drop me a line, if you use
RealTimeCheck.
Planned features are:
I'd like to thank the following people:
But most important: Thanks to all the people, who made "LEXX -The dark
zone" - one of the best science fiction series I've ever seen !
Check this out: You will get this, if your
current system time is dividable by 790 without remainder
...