With ntp and RE50, my system clock would gain seconds each hour if it couldn't sync with a ntp server. Missing the ends of several programs inspired me to check into this. ( With Mythtv, one gets to learn! often more than one wants!) Google, my friend, told me its quite common. What worked? I added to the lilo boot string "noapic" and that didn't do much. I checked my bios config and all the spectrum stuff was off. But what did really work was adding " acpi=off" to the /etc/lilo.conf file "append= " parameter ! Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) seemed to be messing with system time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface

The clock is now quite steady. Before I would get:
/var/log/daemon.log:Apr 30 19:01:24 tvlode ntpd[3108]: synchronized to 76.169.237.141, stratum 1
/var/log/daemon.log:Apr 30 19:22:45 tvlode ntpd[3108]: time reset +0.405341 s

Now there are no time resets! Correct me if wrong, but a time reset means your system clock is so far out of wack that a gentle continous adjustment won't bring it back, so an abrupt reset is needed. Resets happen when the clock is more than 0.128 seconds off.

My append string now is:
append="splash=silent acpi=off noapic nomce apm=power-off quiet screen=800x600 "

Hi

Good stuff, thank you

Your hyperlink picks up the /url at the end so one gets a bad page.

Mike

Thanks, Mike. I fixed it for "us".