Nutty wrote "How can I program Timer2 to obtain this long duration?"

Ungureanu wrote
" But he can !. I know it's not common practice (neither I use it) but SETB C9H will do the job. Obvious with external T2 pin driven by 3Hz square wave signal"

1) The timer can count a maximum of 64k*12 clocks (typically about 64mS) thus the TIMER can not count more.

2) Obviously if you use an external clock and T2 as a counter you can get any time interval you want, but that was not the question.

3) How is enabling a square wave out from T2 (C9h enables this) going to change the timers operation?

One way to extent the timing based on above would be to enable the T2 output and connect that to T1 or T0 counter input, that would enable some longer times while losing a timer instead of a memory byte as in my example.

Happy hollidays,

Erik