The clock port is a commonly used term for the

real-time clock A real-time clock (RTC) is an electronic device (most often in the form of an integrated circuit) that measures the passage of time. Although the term often refers to the devices in personal computers, servers and embedded systems, RTCs are pr ...

interface of the

Amiga 1200 The Amiga 1200, or A1200 (code-named " Channel Z"), is a personal computer in the Amiga computer family released by Commodore International, aimed at the home computer market. It was launched on October 21, 1992, at a base price of £399 in the ...

computer. The port is a remnant of an abandoned design feature for addition of internal RAM and a clock for time keeping. However, it was later widely used as a general purpose expansion port by third-party developers for devices, such as, I/O cards, sound cards and even a

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

controller. Although a real-time clock can be connected to the port, the clock was typically added by other means (usually integrated on CPU or RAM expansions) which leave the clock port free. The A1200 was the only Amiga model to have this unique 22-pin connector (some revisions of the A1200 motherboard have additional non-functional pins). However, as the address and data signals used by the interface are available through the internal expansion connectors of other Amiga models, clock port adaptors were later created by third-party developers for these systems. This enables owners of other popular models, such as the

Amiga 500 The Amiga 500, also known as the A500, is the first low-end version of the Amiga home computer. It contains the same Motorola 68000 as the Amiga 1000, as well as the same graphics and sound coprocessors, but is in a smaller case similar to th ...

or Amiga 600, to use the hardware created for this interface. Due to the popularity of clock port devices, developers even included one or more compatible clock port interfaces on Amiga

Zorro Zorro ( Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante w ...

boards to allow hosting such devices on these systems. Essentially, the connector provides an 8-bit data interface with limited addressing.

Host hardware

* A600 1MB Expansion * Real Time Clock Module * 4-way Clockport Expander * Amiga 1200 built-in (address $d80001) * Zorro IV boards (also addresses $d84001, $d88001 and $d8c001) * Clock port adapter for Amiga 500/1000 * Third party Zorro bus ** Buddha flash ** VarIO ** DENEB ** HIGHWAY ** ISDN-Surfer ** X-Surf, X-Surf II ** Unity ** A603 (1×), A604 ($d80001 and $d90001) * Third party C64 expansion port ** Retro Replay ($de0x or $df2x) ** MMC64 ** MMC Replay ** IDE64 (address $de0x) ** Turbo Chameleon 64

External links

Clockport Expander
(German)
Clockport Expander II
(German)
Amiga 500 Clockport Adapter
(German)

Clockport Splitter

References

{{Compu-hardware-stub Amiga Computer buses