Given that I have a new DMC-30016 with the RTC option do you have any suggestions how I might go about setting up (or troubleshooting) a connected Windows 7 system to work with it as a time server? I've found the example in the the command reference that suggests these commands should cause some response if it were going to work:
RO -7
IHE= >-3
IHE= 192,168,1,1<37>2
MG _RO1{$8.0}
But when I use GalilTools to enter each command, the controller accepts them without complaint but all I get back as a response is "$00000000".
The computer is at 192.168.1.1 and the controller is at 192.168.1.15 on a private dedicated network (they are the only two devices on the network).
MattK on 06/08/2015 - 17:14
Hi Warren,
First off, you mention that your controller comes with the RTC option. In this case, it will only be necessary to set the clock once. The battery backed clock will persist through a power cycle. Does the application require regular resets of the time/calendar value?
As to pinging a time server, the PC that the controller connects to must be specifically configured as a time server in order for port 37 to be utilized. In Linux systems, this is a straightforward matter of editing a configuration file. Windows systems may require a third party application to be run as a time server.
Warren on 06/09/2015 - 07:07
Perhaps in the long term, manually setting the clock is the correct answer but since the ability to use a time server is supposed to be supported, I wanted to see it work so as to have it available if it was needed. As for the battery, it is good for short outages but it does not help if the controller is off for days or longer. If the Google results are to be trusted, Windows can easily be setup as a time server and there are also 3rd party apps that can be added to it if the native functionality is not sufficient, but so far I've not been able to get any of it working, native or otherwise. I hope that someone there had, given that Windows is such a dominant OS.
Warren on 06/09/2015 - 08:45
It seems that TCP on port 37 using the TIME protocol (used by the Galil) is a rather old standard that appears to not be supported (at least not using any of the setting I found) by the Windows W32time server. The NTP protocol using UDP on port 123 is the time protocol of choice for Windows. If I had to guess, the W32time server does not listen to port 37 for time requests. I decided this after creating incoming and outgoing firewall rules that allowed all TCP traffic on port 37 and it still did not work. After much time with Google, I did turn up a freeware program "RFC868 Time Protocol Server" http://www.bttsoftware.co.uk/timeserv.html for Windows 95/98/NT (and Windows 7 too, apparently) that could be just run (no install is necessary) to listen for port 37 requests and respond accordingly. This allowed the time request from the Galil to be properly satisfied.