User Guide

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There is a Tick Routine (that goes live around every 50m sec) in the BIOS to keep record of
date/time information. In general the BIOS, this Tick Routine does not update the CMOS every time
because the CMOS is a very slow device which degrades system performance. The Tick Routine of
the AOpen BIOS has 4 digits for year coding, as long as applications and the operating system
follow the rule to get date/time information. There will be no Y2K problem (such as NSTL’s test
program). But unfortunately again, we found some test programs (such as Checkit 98) accesses
RTC/CMOS directly.
A
pp
lications
O
p
eratin
g
S
y
stem
(
such as Windows 98
)
BIOS
(
Tick Routine
)
RTC and CMOS data