Re: The continuing saga of my 5000/200 [was Re: DECstation 5000/200 timekeeping]

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> So, about that 5000/200 that's been suffering from inability to keen
>> even vaguely decent time: the saga continues.

>> [...] I installed stock 1.4 and timekeeping is _much_ improved [...]

> Can you repeat your NTP "experiment" on a sun4c instead of the 5000/200? Sun$

I installed 5.2 - absolutely stock 5.2 - on a SPARCstation-2.  I'm
fairly sure that's sun4c; if nothing else, when netbooting its TFTP
request name ends in ".SUN4C".

Configured and started ntp.  Gave it some 5-10 minutes without doing
anything else, to let it settle down; it reported itself happily
synced.

I then started hitting the disk and network: pulling over tarballs and
untarring them, very much the sort of thing I was doing on the 5000/200
when the clock started drifting so drastically.

The clock refused to drift.  Or, rather, since it was already drifting
slightly (10-100 ms per 64-second sample), it continued drifting, at
close enough to the same speed that I would have to keep careful
records to tell whether the load made a difference.  It definitely did
not do the ten-seconds-per-minute sort of drift I saw on the 5000/200.

I don't know whether I have any other MIPS machines, to help tell
whether this is a 3MAX issue or a pmax issue or a MIPS issue or what.
I do not have any at ready hand, certainly; if I do have any more, they
are buried somewhere in my storage unit.

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