Thank you for your response!
My test code is to simply get an indication of elapsed time in seconds...I get nothing, just inconsistent garbage. Any help is greatly appreciated!

My setup & algorithm are as follows:

Hardware:
-Data I/O lines D0-D7 are connected to the 80c552 data bus AD0-AD7
-Address lines A0-A4 are connected to my 80c552 Address lines A0-A4 (the bus is multiplexed)
-!RD,!WR, ALE signal lines are all connected to the 80552 control lines
- oscilator is oscillating, 32KHz frequency
-VDD tied +5, VSS tied common, Vbackup is connected to a 2K resistor which is tied to the - of a 3v lithium battery.
-!CS is properly decoded to address 0x8000-0x9fff (the 7170 is the only device located there)

Software: All I want to do is to get it up and running (no alarms, bells, or whisltes just yet). My test code writes to the timer registers, pauses for about 3-6sec and then reads the 1/100th's register and seconds register, then prints the seconds variable to the screen. I get nothing..inconsistent numbers that don't make sense. Here are some code snippets:
//writing to clock
XBYTE[0x8010]=0x00;//mask interrupts
XBYTE[0x8011]=0x04;//stop for write
XBYTE[0x8001]=3; //set up hours
XBYTE[0x8002]=3; //set up mins
XBYTE[0x8003]=30; //set up secs
" " ....etc. and so on
XBYTE[0x8011]=0x0C;//start clock

//I then call a time delay for
//a few seconds

//reading from clock
q=XBYTE[0x8000]; //read 1/100'ths reg
x=XBYTE[0x8003]; //read seconds reg

printf("%x",x); //print seconds

/*I'm also very confident in my developement system and compiler, i've been over it again and again. I think i'm just missing something in the configuration or read write sequence*/