[Info-vax] Clock running very slow on an Alpha

[Michael Moroney]

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:


>> Can anyone think of anything from a VMS perspective that I missed that
>> could be causing this? If it boils down to hardware then what part
>> should I tell the hardware people I need replacing?

>This may not apply to you or on Alpha. But back on my All Mighty
>Microvax II days, I had clock problems too. Turned out that setting up
>CMU IP stack would do something in kernel mode which stopped the clock
>during that time. And since I had a dynamic link and every 15 minutes,
>would setup the CMU IP stack with a new IP address, it spent a lot of
>time in that mode where the clock would lose a few seconds.

Another clock issue that's not the OP's problem is the ZLXp-Ex graphics
card on systems like the Alphastation 200.  When in 'dumb TTY' mode, the
scrolling is done in the console firmware, apparently at high IPL, and 
it's very slow.  It appears the clock interrupts get dropped and the 
system clock loses time while it repaints the screen.