The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 24, 1999
Filed:
May. 01, 1997
Thomas H Baker, Ft. Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A computer date and time clock including an incrementing binary 32 bit register, used to main elapsed date and time in seconds, and an external 1 Hz clock signal, provided by an oscillator, that increments the register. The oscillator and register are both powered by a battery, to make them independent of computer system power. On computer systems having a 32 bit bus, the register can be read or written with a single I/O cycle on the system bus. Operating system software typically performs time calculations using elapsed seconds since a fixed date and time, thus the register count can represent a number of seconds since the fixed date and time. The 1 Hz clock signal is derived from a higher frequency oscillator using a divider circuit, and a reset circuit within the date and time clock clears the divider circuit each time data is stored in the register.