From owner-freebsd-questions Mon May 1 19:39:38 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mostgraveconcern.com (mostgraveconcern.com [216.82.145.240]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 402C837BA16 for ; Mon, 1 May 2000 19:39:34 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dan@mostgraveconcern.com) Received: from danco (danco.mostgraveconcern.com [10.0.0.2]) by mostgraveconcern.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id TAA05318; Mon, 1 May 2000 19:39:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dan@mostgraveconcern.com) Message-ID: <00d201bfb3df$a4fa28c0$0200000a@danco> Reply-To: "Dan O'Connor" From: "Dan O'Connor" To: "Rick Siple" , Subject: Re: Unstable Timecounter? Date: Mon, 1 May 2000 19:39:23 -0700 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I am having some trouble with a older computer with a P90 overdrive chip >in it. The kernel clock seems to be running fast. I rebooted the computer >to reset the CMOS clock, but it was correct. I checked the dmesg logs and >found that the messages about the TSC counter reported a different frequency >every time the computer was rebooted. The other counter, i8254, seems to be >stable. > Is this problem fixable or is the hardware bad? Yes to both... I have a Dell Dimension XPS P90 with a 166MHz Intel Overdrive that does the same thing. (It also did the same thing with the original P90 CPU). You can correct the bad TSC value, and get better timekeeping, using: # sysctl -w machdep.tsc_freq=166209907 (Replace the '166209907' with something closer to your '150000000'; do some experimenting to see which keeps time the best...) To automate this during boot, I added a script (tsc_freq.sh) to /usr/local/etc/rc.d: #!/bin/sh echo "" /sbin/sysctl -w machdep.tsc_freq=166209907 | logger -s echo "" Good luck! --Dan -- Dan O'Connor On Matters of Most Grave Concern http://www.mostgraveconcern.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message