DS1689/DS1693

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TIME, CALENDAR AND ALARM LOCATIONS

The time and calendar information is obtained by reading the appropriate register bytes shown in Table 1.

The time, calendar, and alarm are set or initialized by writing the appropriate register bytes. The contents

of the time, calendar, and alarm registers can be either Binary or Binary-Coded Decimal (BCD) format.

Table 1 shows the binary and BCD formats of the twelve time, calendar, and alarm locations that reside in

both bank 0 and in bank 1, plus the two extended registers that reside in bank 1 only (bank 0 and bank 1

switching will be explained later in this text).

Before writing the internal time, calendar, and alarm registers, the SET bit in Register B should be written

to a logic 1 to prevent updates from occurring while access is being attempted. Also at this time, the data

format (binary or BCD) should be set via the data mode bit (DM) of Register B. All time, calendar, and

alarm registers must use the same data mode. The set bit in Register B should be cleared after the data

mode bit has been written to allow the real-time clock to update the time and calendar bytes.

Once initialized, the real-time clock makes all updates in the selected mode. The data mode cannot be

changed without reinitializing the 10 data bytes. The 24/12 bit cannot be changed without reinitializing

the hour locations. When the 12-hour format is selected, the high order bit of the hours byte represents

PM when it is a logic 1. The time, calendar, and alarm bytes are always accessible because they are

double-buffered. Once per second the 10 bytes are advanced by one second and checked for an alarm

condition. If a read of the time and calendar data occurs during an update, a problem exists where

seconds, minutes, hours, etc. may not correlate. The probability of reading incorrect time and calendar

data is low. Several methods of avoiding any possible incorrect time and calendar reads are covered later

in this text.

The 4 alarm bytes can be used in two ways. First, when the alarm time is written in the appropriate hours,

minutes, and seconds alarm locations, the alarm interrupt is initiated at the specified time each day if the

alarm enable bit is high. The second use condition is to insert a “don’t care” state in one or more of the 4

alarm bytes. The “don’t care” code is any hexadecimal value from C0 to FF. The 2 most significant bits

of each byte set the “don’t care” condition when at logic 1. An alarm will be generated each hour when

the “don’t care” bits are set in the hours byte. Similarly, an alarm is generated every minute with “don’t

care” codes in the hours and minute alarm bytes. The “don’t care” codes in all 3-alarm bytes create an

interrupt every second. The 3 alarm bytes may be used in conjunction with the date alarm as described in

the Wakeup/Kickstart section. The century counter will be discussed later in this text.