Michael Hardy wrote:
> Has anyone developed the reference clock to the symmetricom BC635PCI card under linux? There was chatter on this but the thread ended. The name Rob appeared in the thread an it appeared he developed the driver. I would greatly appreciate help getting this reference clock since symmetricom appears to have no interest in providing one
>
> Thanks
> Mike Hardy

I think there is an NTP driver for this device. For the hardware device
driver, you will have to look to Symmetricom or write your own. Writing
a hardware device driver is not for the faint at heart! You need an
excellent knowledge of how the hardware works and how the O/S you are
using interfaces with devices. An error in a device driver has the
potential to crash the system!

I'm fairly certain that Symmetricomm offers some software support
(device drivers, etc.) for some operating systems and hardware platforms
but you will need to get the details from them.

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:
> Michael Hardy wrote:
>
>> Has anyone developed the reference clock to the symmetricom BC635PCI card under linux? There was chatter on this but the thread ended. The name Rob appeared in the thread an it appeared he developed the driver. I would greatly appreciate help getting this reference clock since symmetricom appears to have no interest in providing one
>>
>> Thanks
>> Mike Hardy
>>
>
> I think there is an NTP driver for this device. For the hardware device
> driver, you will have to look to Symmetricom or write your own. Writing
> a hardware device driver is not for the faint at heart! You need an
> excellent knowledge of how the hardware works and how the O/S you are
> using interfaces with devices. An error in a device driver has the
> potential to crash the system!
>
> I'm fairly certain that Symmetricomm offers some software support
> (device drivers, etc.) for some operating systems and hardware platforms
> but you will need to get the details from them.
NTP has BC635 reference clock support as of version 4.2.4p0 in
refclock_bancomm.c. The reference clock support does expect the
Symmetricom driver, but it wouldn't be difficult to write one since the
only real support needed is reading the time register. No interrupt
support is needed and, depending on your IRIG setup, possibly no BC635
configuration is necessary. However, the Symmetricom device driver for
linux was only $250 one year ago, so it is hardly worth your time.

One hint if you purchase the Symmetricom driver is that you will need to
convert their static library (.a) into a shared library for use with
NTP. Then configure NTP to use that shared library. This prevents
modifying NTP to use the static library. Symmetricom provides no help
in this arena (I asked originally) because, to paraphrase them, they
would be competing with themselves if they helped other folks build NTP
time boxes. Nice, huh?

Andy

David L. Mills wrote:
> Greg,
>
> Not to put a blunt point on it, but Symmetricom did buy out all the
> competition and skewed the product line toward extremely expensive
> solutions. Why not put up candidate source code with appropriate
> disclaimers, including no support whatsoever?
>
> Dave
>
> Greg Dowd wrote:
>
>> I don't think the issue is the competition. In the past decade, I
>> haven't seen more than a handful of people actively trying to create
>> refclocks for the pci card. The more likely issue is actually the



ALL the competition?? ISTR that Meinberg Funkuhren offers a similar
product. It's far too expensive for a hobbyist but if you really NEED
such a thing you should expect to pay something => $1200 US.