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Notice the title! These are questions I expect to be asked, in order for me
not to get swamped with them!

Q. I installed FACTS, but now YAM2 won't let me change the DST switch!
What's going on?


You have the "Emulate SummertimeGuard" option enabled. YAM2 should switch
DST automatically when this is enabled. However, if you have enabled the
emulation and then disabled AutoDST, the STG files will still be on disk and
YAM2 will believe STG to still be installed. If you stop using FACTS or use
FACTS/AutoDST from the command line only, please DISABLE "Emulate
SummertimeGuard", DISABLE "AutoDST" and/or DELETE "ENVARC:SUMMERTIME".

Why is the obtained time clearly incorrect?

If upgrading from an older version of FACTS, then please ensure that all the
settings are what you expect them to be, and try again.

Check that the following settings are correct:

TZ ±hrs
Should be set to the number of hours your timezone is ahead of GMT.
eg. America should have a negative figure here, Europe positive.

Compatibility modes
If the current year is before 2015, then none of these should be set.
Otherwise, refer to the compatibility mode settings.

Services and Ports
Check that the selected service is available on the specified port number.
For example, connecting to sntp on port 37 is generally expected to produce
strange results!

The default ports for each service are as follows:

sntp: 123
time/udp: 37
time/tcp: 37
daytime: 13

If these do not work, contact the server administrator.

Also, make sure you don't have a DST/timezone patch installed which expects
the system time to be one thing, and patches any calls to the correct time
(eg. the one with ixemul). If you have, you may need to set your timezone
to ± 0 hrs (GMT) or leave the DST checkbox permanently unchecked.

If you still have problems, please contact me.

Q. Does FACTS work on OS3.5/3.9?

FACTS works on WB3.5 with no problems, and I have had no reports of it
failing on OS3.9. The GUI will remain GadTools as this keeps it compatible
with OS2.04.

Q. Will there be a PPC/OS4 version of FACTS?

I do not envisage any problems running FACTS on OS4 with the 68K emulator,
and this should be easily fast enough to set the clock accurately.
I have a new implementation of FACTS (currently known as factsppc) in
development. This will be OS4/PPC only and currently only contains a subset
of the features available in FACTS 4.91. Providing the synchronisation works
and is stable, factsppc will have an initial release as soon as I have an OS4
machine and a PPC C compiler. This will probably not have AutoDST
switching at first, as I am hoping this will be part of the OS.

Q. Will there be an AmigaDE version of FACTS?

Already exists! The program is called "fade" and although it is nowhere
near as advanced as FACTS yet it can still synchronise the clock on any
device with an AmigaDE Shell. Due to the fact it needs Shell access, and
a full AmigaDE/intent installation, the amount of devices it will run on
is rather limited. It will eventually be scaleable from PDAs to servers
(including all sorts of time daemons), but for the moment as far as servers
are concerned, this is likely to be an OS4/PPC project.

Q. What is "SLEFF"?

It's a Server List Editor For Facts. Rubbish name, I know. There isn't
much in the way of documentation for it at the moment, except a bit of
a warning here