what is the likely cause of CMOS_WRITE failing to work?

Question

I've been puzzled by a RTC problem for several days: i couldn't write to the RTC register.

Following is the code snippet and the value I read from the reg(last line) is always different from what i just wrote to the reg. Anyone can help me understand this ?

    val = CMOS_READ(RTC_FREQ_SELECT);
    printk(KERN_INFO "reading val=%d from RTC_FREQ_SELECT.\n", val);
    val &= 0xf0;
    val |= 2;
    printk(KERN_INFO "writing val=%d to RTC_FREQ_SELECT.\n", val);
    CMOS_WRITE(val, RTC_FREQ_SELECT);
    printk(KERN_INFO "reading val=%d from RTC_FREQ_SELECT.\n", CMOS_READ(RTC_FREQ_SELECT));

I am using linux 2.6 kernel and the platforms i tried were PPC and x86.

UPDATE: more code snippets per Amardeep's comment...

   /* disable periodic interrupts */
    tmp_control = CMOS_READ(RTC_CONTROL);
    tmp_control &= ~RTC_PIE;
    CMOS_WRITE(tmp_control, RTC_CONTROL);

    CMOS_READ(RTC_INTR_FLAGS);

    val = CMOS_READ(RTC_FREQ_SELECT);
    printk(KERN_INFO "reading val=%d from RTC_FREQ_SELECT.\n", val);

    val &= 0xf0;
    /* ...... */
    val |= 2;
    printk(KERN_INFO "writing val=%d to RTC_FREQ_SELECT.\n", val);

    CMOS_WRITE(val, RTC_FREQ_SELECT);
    printk(KERN_INFO "reading val=%d from RTC_FREQ_SELECT.\n", CMOS_READ(RTC_FREQ_SELECT));


    /* Enable periodic interrupts */
    tmp_control = CMOS_READ(RTC_CONTROL);
    tmp_control |= RTC_PIE;

    CMOS_WRITE(tmp_control, RTC_CONTROL);

    /* read the flags register to start interrupts */
    CMOS_READ(RTC_INTR_FLAGS);