[time-nuts] GPS for Nixie Clock

Hal Murray hmurray at megapathdsl.net
Tue Jul 12 16:21:20 EDT 2016


time at patoka.org said:
> In addition, even MCU has not enough resources to handle TCP/IP, DHCP  and
> NTP, it is some solutions available to outsource it to dedicated  chips. I
> was using WIZ5100 (assembled as a modules) with great success. 

NTP is pretty simple.  If you are willing to take a few shortcuts, things get even simpler.  If you have a NTP server on your LAN, you can skip routing and DHCP by broadcasting a request.  It would be interesting to see how small you could make a set-the-time package.

The Xerox Alto had an Ethernet boot loader in microcode.  (and space in the microcode ROM was tight)  When bringing up a new machine, we figured out that it was much simpler and faster to debug the Ethernet before the disk controller.  The debugger worked over the Ethernet.  That gave you a solid place to stand early in the debugging process.


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