Did anyone know that setting the clock writes the time to Flash memory?
Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2021 2:38 pm
Sorry for the long title, but I didn't quite know how to make it succinct and couldn't find anything in the forum about it. Anyway, I've been playing around with syncing the clock via SNTP and was baffled that the Dreamcast would prompt for a new date and time if it reached 29 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and about 40-50 seconds of difference between what it reads on start and what it has stored in Flash. I haven't tried to set a time in the past to figure out if there's also a reverse limit.
I'm not sure if any games account for this, as they're not meant to modify the time. I'm wondering if anyone has tried setting the time and running a game, or sit at the BootROM, for 30 days to see if it triggers the same thing on restarting?
This is in partition 2, offset 5. The first value. I think there are other system settings in there as well, but I haven't tried to track down where they belong.
It might be a silly thing to bring up, but we've still got another ~64 years of time left with the stock BootROM
. I'm sure that the wear-levelling and write count will hold up in any case.
EDIT (2021/11/17@539)
I found that setting the time backward in any way that only affects the minute recognised will also cause the same issue. Such as setting the time from 19:06:00 to 19:05:50. The interval in seconds doesn't matter. It can be 19:05:59 going back to 19:05:00 and will be fine, but if it's 19:05:01 going back to 19:04:59, it will consider that invalid.
I'm not sure if any games account for this, as they're not meant to modify the time. I'm wondering if anyone has tried setting the time and running a game, or sit at the BootROM, for 30 days to see if it triggers the same thing on restarting?
This is in partition 2, offset 5. The first value. I think there are other system settings in there as well, but I haven't tried to track down where they belong.
It might be a silly thing to bring up, but we've still got another ~64 years of time left with the stock BootROM
. I'm sure that the wear-levelling and write count will hold up in any case.EDIT (2021/11/17@539)
I found that setting the time backward in any way that only affects the minute recognised will also cause the same issue. Such as setting the time from 19:06:00 to 19:05:50. The interval in seconds doesn't matter. It can be 19:05:59 going back to 19:05:00 and will be fine, but if it's 19:05:01 going back to 19:04:59, it will consider that invalid.