Re: Question: How will the Year 2000 bug impact your work?

On Thu, 24 Oct 1996 16:24:06 -0500, Gordon Burditt <gordonb@airmail.net> wrote: >> There is another very important year 2000 problem that is not in the >> above list. >> >> Most PC's built before this year have a hardware problem (or firmware) >> dealing with the year 2000. So no matter what you do to your software, >> your PC will roll from 12/31/1999 to 01/01/1980 instead of 01/01/2000. > >Big deal. You have to set the clock ONCE, and you know years ahead >of time that you're going to have to set the clock. Chances are >that stupid CMOS battery will die on you between now and the year 2000 >anyway, so you'll have to set the clock before then. (Remember >digital clocks that don't even HAVE battery backup?) Except for >PCs being used to do real-time control, as in air traffic control >or nuclear reactors, I see this as a minor annoyance, not a very >important problem. And doesn't this only happen if the computer is >POWERED OFF during the rollover, which would seem to exclude >real-time control systems? No, there are many computers which will revert back to 1980 after turning them off if set to a date past 1999. The CMOS just can't save the date, but the OS can run it once it's set. Where I work, we have approx. 25,000 P.C.s, and there is going to be a huge death toll just before the year 2000. I know of what I speak. We are spending millions of dollars studying and reacting to this problem from mainframes to the desktop. Even routers come into the 2000 compliance picture. This firmware problem with P.C.s is a big problem. With 25,000 P.C.s, the cost of just upgrading all the BIOS's if it were possible would be astronomical. The cost of doing nothing and hoping the P.C. can be compliant is also astronomical, since fixing the date problems due to non compliant P.C.s on a daily basis will be extremely labor intensive. These P.C.s, if allowed to remain in the processing pool will introduce errors into the data stream. Ultimately, that cannot be tolerated. You clearly have no respect for the scope of this problem. If you are talking about your home PC, yes it is a minor annoyance, just like a single mosquito. How would you like to be in a PC/LAN support group with 25,000 mosquitos? Trust me, there would be no fun days after that. >Now, if your hardware won't LET you set the date to 01/01/2000, now >you've got a serious problem. There are some much older systems >that have this problem, but it's not nearly as common as the rollover >problem. > > >> There's going to be a shitload of PC's going into dumpsters in January >> of 2000. > >Why is it easier to throw a PC into the dumpster rather than set >the darn clock once? Many of them will get BIOS upgrades. Many of the will be recycled to charity. Many of them will end up in the landfill. From our business alone, I predict this number will run into the thousands. --- Phil Barnett mailto:philb@iag.net WWW http://www.iag.net/~philb/ FTP Site ftp://ftp.iag.net/pub/clipper