First steps in time lapse
to answer your question:

basic setup: camera, scene, computer with editing suite (after effects, premiere, vegas, final cut express, quicktime)

You must trigger record frame every second or predifined interval of time, setup your editing timeline at 25 fps and import your footage.
if you are doing frames you must import frames interpet them and put it on timeline (depends on what software pack are you using)

so, if we want to capture/record every second per frame, that is 60 frames which is 2 seconds and 10 frames on PAL or 2 seconds straight on NTSC (25 fps PAL / 30 fps NTSC), that is, in 2 seconds you will see 1 minute of real time. and the mathematics goes on.

so this is the concept.

some cameras lets you get a movie out of record frames, some do it manualy.
after we have shot as many frames / time we wanted we can move on to assemble those frames and edit them.