Klarinet Archive - Posting 000788.txt from 1998/08

From: Roger Shilcock <roger.shilcock@-----.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: Y2K
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 10:08:57 -0400

Dear Tim R.,
Thank you for this lucid statement, unKlarinet though it be. An amazing
amount of rubbish has appeared in the press over here on this topic, and
no doubt dubious "management consultants" are already making money out of
Y2K for the wrong reasons.
In any case, programs in Cobol or PL/I (many older non-interactive
business programs) *could* easily have written so as to account for the
2000 rollover, with a small amount of extra arithmetic. Perhaps some of
them were, and this has been forgotten. Embedded systems are something
else.
Roger Shilcock

On Wed, 26 Aug 1998, Tim Roberts wrote:

> Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 14:36:22 -0700
> From: Tim Roberts <timr@-----.com>
> Reply-To: klarinet@-----.org
> To: Clarinet List <klarinet@-----.org>
> Subject: Re: [kl] Re: Y2K
>
> I started to send this privately, and I probably should have continued to do
> so, but I finally decided this was an important point to clarify. I didn't
> realize when I started that I was going on a crusade....
>
> On 26 Aug 1998 12:00:41 EDT, <GrabnerWG@-----.com> wrote:
> >In a message dated 98-08-21 17:13:44 EDT, timr writes:
> >>
> >> Yes, but there has been far too much hysterics generated about this topic.
> >> Let's take a reality check for a minute.
> >
> >Tim, I'm sorry, but your "reality check" is based on your opinion only.
> >
> >Again.....I will state that the biggest problems will be in equipment that
> >has embedded microchips. Some of these microchips are 286's....and
> >I'm sorry, but they will not work, probably will not boot, after 12/31/98.
>
> Unless you're talking about a chip other than the Intel 80286, this is just
> exactly the kind of hysterics to which I was referring. The 286, like EVERY
> x80 and x86 processor ever produced, has no inherent date capabilities at
> all. As such, all the 286s in the world will be completely oblivious to the
> change of century. Even 20 year old 8080s will continue to work right across
> the century boundary without a hiccup.
>
> I suspect what you MEANT to say is that there are older SYSTEMS (which might
> be based on 286s) which have software that will not handle the date change
> correctly, but that is VERY different from what you said. The chips will not
> stop working. They don't care.
>
> All the computers in the world are going to boot on 1/1/00 (assuming they
> were bootable on 12/31/99!). Some of them have operating systems which will
> read the date incorrectly during their boot process, but the computers are
> NOT going to roll over and die. Older PCs might think the date is 1/1/1980,
> but they'll work. Inconvenient, not catastrophic.
>
> >Many organizations
> >realize that they will not even be able to Identify all the equipment that
> >they use, let alone replace, test, and put back into production, where
> >obsolete microchips are still in use.
>
> Obsolete microchips are NOT the problem. Microprocessors almost never have
> time and date functions built-in. The problem is old SOFTWARE.
>
> >Example.....a manufacturing company in Milwaukee where I have done some
> >consulting work will have their business computer Y2K compliant by next
> >spring. However they are just NOW realizing how many machines on the
> >shop floor rely on old microchips THAT SIMPLY WONT WORK.
>
> Of COURSE they will work! What part of them do you think is going to stop
> working? To rephrase what I said in my last ranting, if you never tell a
> piece of machinery what the date is, then IT DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE CENTURY
> CHANGE. It CAN'T care: it won't know! It will continue to run happily
> along, forever. Very few pieces of factory automation eqiupment care about
> the date, because they don't NEED to. This is just business common sense.
> It costs money (and cycles) to add and maintain calendar capabilities in a
> piece of equipment. If it's not needed, it's not added.
>
> >Cars, toasters, telephones, toys, radios, alarm clocks, medical
> >equipment......they all can have microchips!!!!!!!!!!!!! Think about it.
>
> Yes, they all have microchips, but NONE OF THOSE THINGS CARE ABOUT THE DATE!
> THAT'S my point. You don't tell your toaster what the date is. Your radio
> doesn't know what year it is. Your doctor's EKG machine doesn't know what
> year it is. And if they don't know the year, they CANNOT fail when the year
> rolls from 99 to 00. That is not opinion, that is fact.
>
> --
> - Tim Roberts, timr@-----.com
> Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
>
>
>
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>

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