Bootcode 'nortc': what does it do?

[dspence]

Hi all,

I have a computer that has Tiny Core 5.4 installed on.  It was working fine for months.  Then suddenly it wouldn't boot anymore (maybe it was turned off for some weeks).  It got stuck after printing  the line "Setting Language to en_US.utf8 Done."

I tried a few times, and it always stopped there.  I waited for more than 10 minutes on a couple of occasions, in case it was just being very, very slow to do something.

I searched and found this thread:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=20004.0

So I booted the machine using USB stick, and added bootcode 'nortc' to file extlinux.conf.  After that, the machine was able to boot Tiny Core Linux from its internal drive.  It booted this way several times, then I removed 'nortc' from extlinux.conf and it got stuck at the same place.

That was yesterday.  Today, it booted, without the 'nortc' bootcode.  The date set from the RTC was 2002-01-01.

What does the 'nortc' bootcode actually do?  Does anyone have a guess what might be happening?

Thanks.

[Misalf]

The  nortc  boot code skips setting system time from hardware clock (Real Time Clock).
Maybe your main boards battery went empty. Not unlikely for older systems, especially if they weren't running for some time.

[bmarkus]

Using the nortc boot code TC will set system date and time from Internet with ntp, which expect net connectivity during startup.

Without nortc hw date and time used (motherboard RTC) or BIOS default.

[dspence]

Thanks for the responses.

So if the machine has a rtc, and the rtc battery is empty, this will cause boot failure?

What will happen if I have the 'nortc' boot code, and no network connection?  (I will try it.)