From: m5@dev.tivoli.com (Mike McNally)
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 95 05:49:32 PDT
To: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us>
Subject: Re: My Day
In-Reply-To: <43oquc$70f@tera.mcom.com>
Message-ID: <9509201248.AA09892@alpha>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Bill Sommerfeld writes:
 > >   the second 32bit seed is the "tick count", which I'm told is the number of
 > > milliseconds since windows started.
 > 
 > A 32-bit ms-resolution counter wraps roughly every 50 days.  Very few
 > Windoze PC's stay up that long :-).

Also (and note that it's been a while since I've messed around with
PC's, but since the "architecture" remains chained to an early-80's
design I suspect they're still the same) the PC clock frequency is
generally pretty low.  PC UNIX implementations usually run it at about
100 Hz, I think.  There aren't a lot of available timers on the PC.
One of them used to be used as the DRAM refresh timer; I don't know
whether they still do that.

On the other hand, getting at a Windows PC over the network is a whole
'nuther enchilada, though if I want to keep my day job I need to get
that figured out real soon now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Nobody's going to listen to you if you just | Mike McNally (m5@tivoli.com) |
| stand there and flap your arms like a fish. | Tivoli Systems, Austin TX    |
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