7 seconds nominalrinse fill 3 minutes nominalrinse agitate 2 minutes fixedthird pause 15 7 seconds nominalfinal spin 5 5 minutes fixed______________________________________ from the foregoing table it will be seen that most of the operational modes are of a fixed time duration with the exception of the two fill operations which have a nominal duration of three minutes each and the three pause intervals which have nominal durations of fifteen seconds plus seven seconds each in accordance with the invention differences between the actual duration of the fill operations and the nominal fill time is compensated for to the extent possible by adjusting the durations of the pause intervals accordingly the initial setting of the time remaining cycle timer accurately reflects the total cycle time and accurately reflects 34 time remaining 34 as a wash cycle proceeds it will be appreciated that in accordance with the disclosure of the above incorporated concurrently filed application ser no 07 969 139 the 34 fixed 34 time durations in the foregoing table are subject to programming for various durations nevertheless ordinarily at the beginning of a particular machine operational cycle these durations are fixed for that particular cycle in fig3 a the first execution step is in box 62 where the count down timer 48 is initialized to a state representing the nominal total cycle time by summing the durations of the operational modes of the wash cycle such as in the table example above and storing the result as the variable time remaining thereafter the fig2 routine decrements the variable time remaining at.