eli5: At the most basic level, how is a computer programmed to know how long a unit of time is?
In: 2404
There is a chip in the pc that contains a quartz crystal that vibrates at a known speed when a small amount of electricity is run through it. That chip is connected to a watch battery – and contains a counter that counts how many times it has vibrated – which is essentially a count of fractions of a second since the battery was connected. You set the time to tell it a point to start counting from, and then from there, it counts.
Open your PC, you will see a battery the size of a quarter. If your PC stops keeping time correctly when you turn it off, replace that battery.
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