That sounds like your clock battery's shot. With a desktop you can 
change it yourself. Being that it's a PowerBook I'd say take it to a 
service center.

--Lloyd


At 11:36 PM +0100 2/1/00, Tino Reinhardt wrote:
>hi there,
>I'm playing around with a PowerBook 520.
>It seems to be impossible to set the clock properly:
>
>On startup (boot) it shows "PRAM: time does not appear to be read
>correctly" and "check an reset the date".
>
>Typing "date 200002022300" sets the date correctly for the current uptime
>but whilst shutting down, it says "netbsd does not trust itself to set the
>RTC". Hm. What does this mean?
>
>rebooting the machine brings me back to the old date (22 Jan 1904 -- what
>a fun) and typing the "date"-setting-command again _freezes_ the machine.
>
>I'm too clueless to set the date (RTC?) under my very minimal MacOS.
>
>Any ideas, suggestion, experiences?
>THX Tino