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7.21. I have heard that there's a way to synchronize the time on your computer with a network time server. How do I do that on my Mac?

This is a job for Veronica! Let's search for network and time -t0 to find documents that have both network and time in their title.

There are tons of matches, and from a cursory inspection you can see that the standard name for this service is "NTP," the Network Time Protocol. Now let's revisit the search, because we want information on NTP and the Macintosh. This time we search for NTP and Mac? -t0 (the question mark is so that we can match Mac and Macintosh) and see one match, net_machine.h, which isn't what we want. Hmmm. Let's skip the "NTP" stuff and try a variant of the original query: network and time and mac? -t0. Ah ha! This yields the following:

1.  Network Time for Mac - Info required.
2.  Network Time for Mac - Info required.
3.  SUMMARY - Network Time for Mac.
4.  SUMMARY - Network Time for Mac.
The third entry is what we're looking for. I type 3, press Return, and see the following:
This is from the document
'/lists-k-o/mac-supporters/archives/09-1993'.

From: Vlastimil Malinek <v.malinek@mrc-apu.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 93 14:37:54 BST
To: mac-supporters@mailbase.ac.uk
Subject: SUMMARY - Network Time for Mac

I asked:

> I run NTP (Network Time Protocol) at this site. ........
> Does anyone know of an application (or anything else) that will
allow
> the mac's clock to be set at boot time from a datehost?

A host of helpful replies arrived. Unfortunately I wasn't able to try them
out immediately as the hard disks on my mac decided to go down.... However,
here is summary of the replies:

1) 'VersaTerm Time Client' which is shipped by Synergy Software with
   VersaTerm PRO and VersaTerm.

I have VersaTerm Pro in-house but only a couple of copies which are used by
other people so I didn't test this one. However, it is being used by some of
the respondees.

2) 'Tardis' This is part of the CAP package. It sits in the 'Chooser' and
will
connect to a CAP 'Timelord' server. Or, it will connect to another mac
acting as 'Timelord' (better than nothing I suppose).

3) Network Time. sumex:
/info-mac/Communication/Network/network-time-20.hqx
Excellent! This is the business. Allows you to make an Extension once you've
configured which you can punt out to your machines. Will run at boot time or
when a TCP/IP connection is made or both. Very configurable. You can also make
your own timezones (you'll need one for the UK because of Daylight Savings).

Takes IP addresses as well as names and has a list of timeservers.
Only drawback. Manual comes in MacWrite Pro format and the postscript comes
set 
for US letter. As the whole thing is done as odd/even pages it's very
difficult 
to get at if you don't have MacWrite Pro. However, one of my colleagues
wrote me 
a nice unix script that will convert the postscript to A4 if anyone wants
it.

Thanks again to everyone for the very helpful replies.

Vlastimil Malinek
MRC Applied Psychology Unit
15 Chaucer Road
Cambridge CB2 2EF

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