TimeSet: A Computer Program That Accesses Five Atomic Time Services on Two Continents

P.L. Petrakis

Abstract:	TimeSet is a shareware program for accessing digital time services by telephone. At its initial release, it was capable of capturing time signals only from the U.S. Naval Observatory to set a computer's clock, Later the ability to synchronize with the National institute of Standards and Technology was added. Now, in Version 7.10, TimeSet is able to access three additional telephone time services in Europe - in Sweden, Austria, and Italy - making a total of five official services addressable by the program. A companion program, TimeGen, allows yet another source of telephone time data strings for callers equipped with TimeSet version 7.10. TimeGen synthesizes UTC time data strings in the Naval Observatory's format from an accurately set and maintained DOS computer clock, and transmits them to callers. This allows an unlimited number of "freelance" time generating solutions to be created. Timesetting from TimeGen is made feasible by the advent of Becker's RighTime, a shareware program that learns the drip characteristics of a computer's clock and continuously applies a correction to keep it accurate, ad also brings .01 second resolution to the DOS clock. With clock regulation by RighTime and periodic update calls by the TimeGen station to an official time source via Timeset, TimeGen offers the same degree of accuracy within the resolution of the computer clock as any official atomic time source.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 24th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting December 1 - 3, 1992 Ritz-Carlton Hotel McLean, Virginia
Pages:	255 - 266
Cite this article:	Petrakis, P.L., "TimeSet: A Computer Program That Accesses Five Atomic Time Services on Two Continents," Proceedings of the 24th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, McLean, Virginia, December 1992, pp. 255-266.
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