time servers

[rusty at sdcc3.UUCP]

someone just told me that heathkit is making a device that listens on
the various frequencies that have the time transmitted on them. i don't
know what frequencies these are. if you have a radio with some
shortwave bands you may have come across one; you hear a sort of
blipping tone and then every so often (once a second i think) you hear
a man's voice give the time. it is given in what used to be called
greenwich mean time (now its called universal something or other). the
time reference they are using is an atomic clock. these broadcasts are
by the national bureau of standards.


anyhow, back to this heathkit device; it has an rs232 connection on
it. it is designed to be hooked up to a computer. i guess one of these
frequencies has the time transmitted in a way that can be decoded by a
computer? i guess you can have your computer ask it every so often what
time it is, or maybe the heathkit box spits out the time on the rs232
connection every so often. i have no idea about the format of the data
into or out of of the rs232 connector.

so, what i was thinking is that if you get a time server going you
might want to get one of these gizmos.