Quote Originally Posted by hackableFM View Post
I intend to built a control unit based around a 16F877 which will include menu's to control output pins on the PIC, Obviously within the menu there will likely be instructions which will keep the processor busy for a few Ms at a time. My project ideas originally were to include an external clock device such as the DS1307 or the DS1603 to keep track of time whilst the rest of the program (Menu's etc etc) is running and keeping the processor busy.
I was advised on this forum to look at this thread and if this is what I think it is then it will be truly fantastic for my project. ...
It can do the things you are suggesting.

But it's not a replacement for a battery backed-up RTC chip.
Any RESET will lose the accumulated time.

I have used it as a clock running on-chip, but on power-up it reads the time from an RTC. That way it doesn't have to continuously read the time via I2C and it's always available from the internal time clock.
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