This is a remarkably long and interesting thread so I don't feel it's unreasonable to insert a comment which relates more directly to the original post.
Way back in May 2009, David Taylor and Richard Gilbert said (Richard) > An error greater than 500 PPM suggests seriously broken hardware! There > might be some way to "kludge" the software to compensate for > this brokenness but I think it would be easier and cheaper to fix or > replace the broken hardware. (David) I was trying to see what errors might be expected in the typical PC clock crystals, but my gut instinct is to agree with you. However, suggesting that someone replace their pride and joy just because it doesn't run ntp is unlikely to elicit a favourable response! I recall that the NTP support wiki has a page on "known hardware issues" (http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Support/ KnownHardwareIssues#Section_9.1.7.) which cites a number of examples where combinations of hardware, BIOS and OS produced some seriously unstable or inaccurate clocks. It seems to me that these combinations really are in some sense "broken", but they could often be fixed without replacing the hardware. My instinct is that it would be better for people who encounter systems with very inaccurate or unstable clocks to document these cases and look for (and document) fixes which don't involve changes to ntp. -- John Allen Bofferdange, Luxembourg al...@vo.lu http://allenlux.dyndns.org _______________________________________________ questions mailing list questions@lists.ntp.org https://lists.ntp.org/mailman/listinfo/questions
