GET.NSC.TIME-- yet another tiny little program from Saint John Morrison.
The author may be reached on America Online (St John2), on his own BBS
at (215) 386-0350 (hit RETURN after signal), or by mail at POB 42864,
Philadelphia PA 19104-2864. Include a SASE if you want a reply. The
program in this package is freeware. It may be distributed to anyone,
but no charge may be paid for its transfer.

The SMT No-Slot Clock (hereafter referred to as the "NSC") is-- well,
it's there. I can't call it an extraordinary piece of hardware, and yet
it has its uses. For one thing, short of buying a Checkmate Z-Ram board,
it's the only way to get a system clock in a //c. Unfortunately, on that
//c, it's going to bend the memory expansion board a bit. I put the
bubble-wrap that came in the NSC packing between the memory card and the
keyboard. The second problem is worse. For whatever reason, the NSC
doesn't work with a Zip Chip or a 65802. It might have something to do
with cacheing, or with the different cycle time, but the software won't
even recognize that it's installed. In circumstances like this, I
usually pull out the ol' copy of Merlin Pro and begin hacking.
Unfortunately, the "read the date" routine that they give you is 127
bytes long once you pad it with necessary safety procedures (PHP, SEI,
toggle $CFFF, etc). The clock subroutine takes up either 125 or 127
bytes in ProDOS, depending on whose word you take (Doms & Weishaar's or
Apple's); that doesn't leave any room for even the most rudimentary
turn-Zip-off and turn-Zip-on routines. On the other hand, most of us
have digital watches. We can look at them if we need the time; the role
of a system clock is to tell which file is newer than the last one. And
for that, we can be approximate. The GET.NSC.TIME program is very
approximate-- it updates the ProDOS global page date/time from the info
on the NSC. It sets the Zip Chip back where it found it. And that's
about all there is. Just BRUN it whenever you feel a need for the time.
Or put it on every disk you own, and in the STARTUP program add the line
1 PRINT CHR$(4)"-GET.NSC.TIME"
     Naturally, the source code is included.


A program is also included for DOS 3.3. This is NSC.READER, and should
be moved to a DOS 3.3 disk. When BRUN, it puts the digits of the date
and time in $0300 and up:
     Hex       Dec       Data
     0300      768       day of month, 1-31
     0301      769       month, 1-12
     0302      770       year, 0-99
     0303      771       hour, 1-24
     0304      772       minute, 0-59

Also included is NSC.READER.PRG, a program that puts the digits in a
more pleasing format and writes a little file that tells me when I last
booted the disk I'm working on. (This gives me some indication when I
last backed up a disk.)