Atmel microprocessors became popular at the time along with their IDE and their development boards. The IDE used C compilers add-ons Which made it very convent for developers. Seemed like everyone was working on something with Atmel chips at the time there was a trend to make small interface modules to add functionality to their projects. The Real Time Clock (RTC) was a DS1307 mounted on the same board as the microprocessor. A shorting pin was used to select 12 or 24 hour mode. A Button interface accessed a menu driven date, time and alarm setup routine.
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