BIOS clock data mining

[the_risk_master]

Dear sirs,


I want to know if I can extract information through the parallel port or serial port
from the BIOS clock (RTC), I am programming through C, the gettime displays in decimal form, I want to have it on HEX or BIN format to input it to my custom design circuit. Any help/advise/URL is welcome, thank you.


regards,
the_risk_master

 

[rjainv]

Reading time in software(C) via BIOS call is a on-demand event. So C can call function in BIOS which will read the appriopriate register from RTC circuit on motherboard and give back the time.

Connecting this time information from RTC block to a parallel/serial port would be some sort of continuous connection. So Either there could be some s/w routine running in background that keeps reading time from RTC and write it to serial/parallel port, or if RTC chip outputs are visible on motherboard ( impossible these days, its part of super IO chip or southbridge), then it could be connect to some encoder circuit that could take the time/date and encode it to drive a new serial/parallel port.

 

[the_risk_master]

Okay this is it, I made a test program

#include<conio.h>
#include<dos.h>
#include<time.h>

struct time t;
struct date d;
unsigned char h,m,s,month,num,year,flag;

void main()
{
while(1){ /* this makes my program read the time continuously */

gettime(&t);
getdate(&d);

h=t.ti_hour;
m=t.ti_min;
s=t.ti_sec;

month=d.da_mon;
num=d.da_day;
year=d.da_year;

printf("TIME: %02x:%02x:%02x DATE: %x/%x/%4x \n",h,m,s,month,num,year);

}
}

I'll update some other time for improvements...
at least I made to continuously read the date and time in HEX format
Now, I will plan the circuitry for the interfacing