Whether or not your PC can handle Y2K has less to do with your
hardware than with your firmware. If you have or can obtain a newer
BIOS for your PC you should be OK. Most Pentium systems I have seen
have a flash BIOS, so if you can get a upgrade file from the PC vendor
your machine should be able to be made Y2K compliant. If you don't
have a flash, you may be able to get a newer EPROM from the
manufacturer, or from MR BIOS (http://www.mrbios.com).
I know you said your PC is OK with Y2K, but this is for those out
there who are less fortunate.
CIAO - Martin
______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: There is a problem with the date ???.
Author: pic microcontroller discussion list <spam_OUTPICLISTTakeThisOuTMITVMA.MIT.EDU> at
Internet
Date: 6/20/98 3:04 PM
Hi to you all,
Excuse me, I know this doesn't have relation with the PIC's stuff but I
think that somebody can help out.
In Windows 95 I change the date to the year 2000 and the calendar can
work
with it.
I have a new Machine: IBM Aptiva D91 with Pentium 200MMX.
So That means that Intel solve the "problem with the year 2000" ?
THere must be something that I am totally not noticing, but I can not
ever remember seeing a PC whose BIOS couldn't handle years >2000. Not
that I went and tested every one, but I have sometimes seen PC's dates
accidentally get set to a year like 2048. I can buy that banks and the
gov't will have a problem with older systems, but I have always been
under the impression that it was standard in PCs to store the date in a
format offset from some recent year (I think 1980). I also thought that
at least 8 bits were devoted to it.
> Whether or not your PC can handle Y2K has less to do with your
> hardware than with your firmware. If you have or can obtain a newer
> BIOS for your PC you should be OK. Most Pentium systems I have seen
> have a flash BIOS, so if you can get a upgrade file from the PC vendor
> your machine should be able to be made Y2K compliant. If you don't
> have a flash, you may be able to get a newer EPROM from the
> manufacturer, or from MR BIOS (http://www.mrbios.com).
>
> I know you said your PC is OK with Y2K, but this is for those out
> there who are less fortunate.
>
>
> CIAO - Martin
>
>
> ______________________________ Reply Separator _______________________________
> Subject: There is a problem with the date ???.
> Author: pic microcontroller discussion list <.....PICLISTKILLspam@spam@MITVMA.MIT.EDU> at
> Internet
> Date: 6/20/98 3:04 PM
>
>
> Hi to you all,
>
>
> Excuse me, I know this doesn't have relation with the PIC's stuff but
I
> think that somebody can help out.
>
> In Windows 95 I change the date to the year 2000 and the calendar can
> work
> with it.
>
>
> I have a new Machine: IBM Aptiva D91 with Pentium 200MMX.
>
> So That means that Intel solve the "problem with the year 2000" ?
>
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
The real-time clock chip used in older PCs only has two digits for the
year counter. The BIOS doesn't care (except that it might only know how
to read the two-digit clock chips), since it only passes the time to
DOS/WIN. DOS/WIN doesn't care much (except file dates.) Whether your
applications do the right thing is up to them. There's reasonable info
on this sort of stuff at Dallas's web site, since they've sold both good
and bad clock chips :-)
Mainframes have less of a problem GETTING the correct date, but are likely
to have databases with 2-character fields, read by programs that carefully
rangecheck and/or have actual 2-decimal-digit data types, and then do
comparisons. I don't remember any of the little cobol I learned once, but
(for example) you have a pascal program with "var year 0..99;" (is that
close?) and then "if claimyear > lawchangeyear then" there isn't any way
that will end up correct after 2000. You'd have been better off in "awful
C" with "int year;" - at least then all you'd have to change was your I/O.
I mostly see the silly side of this: "is your router with no senses of date
to start with certified to be year-2000 compatible"?, I talked with a
financial planner the other day, and he had a significant worry that there
would be financial crises related to the "year 2000 problem". (~30%, I
think.) I think "Crisis" in this context means anything that will spook
the stock market, as opposed to "real" crises...
> Van: Sean Breheny <shb7KILLspamCORNELL.EDU>
> Aan: .....PICLISTKILLspam.....MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Onderwerp: Re: There is a problem with the date ???.
> Datum: maandag 22 juni 1998 23:18
>
> THere must be something that I am totally not noticing, but I can not
> ever remember seeing a PC whose BIOS couldn't handle years >2000. Not
> that I went and tested every one, but I have sometimes seen PC's dates
> accidentally get set to a year like 2048. I can buy that banks and the
> gov't will have a problem with older systems, but I have always been
> under the impression that it was standard in PCs to store the date in a
> format offset from some recent year (I think 1980). I also thought that
> at least 8 bits were devoted to it.
>
> Sean
[Cut]
Sean, you seem to mix-up two types of date-storage. One of the BIOS
(stored into the real-time clock), and one of DOS (the file-management)
wich is, as you say, offsetted by 1980 and is 7 bit _binary_.
The third type (and thats the type all the fuss is al about) is the one
embedded in _third-party_ software/firmware/hardware that uses only two
ASCII-digits to store the date.
> > Van: Sean Breheny <EraseMEshb7spam_OUTTakeThisOuTCORNELL.EDU>
> > Aan: PICLISTspam_OUTMITVMA.MIT.EDU
> > Onderwerp: Re: There is a problem with the date ???.
> > Datum: maandag 22 juni 1998 23:18
> >
> > THere must be something that I am totally not noticing, but I can not
> > ever remember seeing a PC whose BIOS couldn't handle years >2000. Not
> > that I went and tested every one, but I have sometimes seen PC's dates
> > accidentally get set to a year like 2048. I can buy that banks and the
> > gov't will have a problem with older systems, but I have always been
> > under the impression that it was standard in PCs to store the date in a
> > format offset from some recent year (I think 1980). I also thought that
> > at least 8 bits were devoted to it.
> >
> > Sean
>
> [Cut]
>
> Sean, you seem to mix-up two types of date-storage. One of the BIOS
> (stored into the real-time clock), and one of DOS (the file-management)
> wich is, as you say, offsetted by 1980 and is 7 bit _binary_.
>
> The third type (and thats the type all the fuss is al about) is the one
> embedded in _third-party_ software/firmware/hardware that uses only two
> ASCII-digits to store the date.
Hi Rudy,
THanks for the correction. I guess that you are right, at least some PCs
have a storage technique in the BIOS (or in some application programs)
which cannot accept years >2000. Yes, I was thinking of the 7bit offset
from 1980.
> The only thing more irritating than a bad solution is a bad solution
> to a non-problem.
Ah, but is is solving *some* people's problem; that of income between
now and the year 2000, isn't it?
Martin Green wrote:
> In short, to test your PC, set your clock to a few minutes before
> midnight, December 31, 1999, then shut off your PC. Wait a few
> minutes, until the clock should be well into January 1, 2000 and run
> your PC back on.
... etc. I'm not sure what the point is here. Whether or not the
thing rolls over neatly into the new century is of no consequence
whatever. It won't take a lot of time to go around setting computer
clocks on the morning if the 1st January, 2000 (whichever day of the
week it happens to be. Which is it anyway?) What *is* meaningful is
whether that date can be entered at all, and whether it will roll over
correctly the *next* night and every other one after that.
And yes, whether WIN99 OSR6 handles it OK, and whether your apps were
written by a smart-ar*e shyster or a competent programmer. I have
written all my stuff Y2K compliant since the early 1980s (i.e., when I
first had real-time clocks and/ or disks!) because I didn't think there
was any other way to do it. Also of course, as it was my *own* stuff,
now that's telling, isn't it?
There are two computers in my office at work. One is a
12-year-old IBM P.C./XT equipped with an AST clock board. The other
is a Compaq486/33. The XT, believe it or not, rolls over perfectly
from Dec. 31, 1999 to Jan. 1, 2000 with no problem at all while the
CP486 which was built in 1993 gets very confused and goes to something
like January 4, 1980. It doesn't quite start at the beginning again.
The problem appears to be in the CMOS counter because I can manually
set it to a date in 2000 and it works fine. Basically, everything
somebody has mentioned in this thread from the individual software
applications being run to the system BIOS to the battery-run clock can
be a source of trouble if it wasn't designed without shortcuts. I
just thought it was amusing that the old XT dinosaur did it right. I
use that box as a terminal in to a UNIX system so it doesn't matter,
but it was an interesting test. Of course, an XT with a different
peripheral clock module is a hole different case and it all depends on
what count the BIOS and DOS get to see when the system is powered up.
MITVMA.MIT.EDU> at
