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The PC has an entire class of problems, some of which are discussed here. |
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AT-class machines (286 through Pentium) have a CMOS Real Time Clock (RTC) maintaining a two-digit year. The century is not incremented when the year overflows from 99 to 00. The BIOS sets and reads the century, but does not maintain it. Neither DOS nor Windows, at this writing, makes the change to the RTC, so if the machine is rebooted after midnight on 1 January 2000, the RTC supplies 1 January 1900 to DOS, which is an invalid date and subsequently mishandled as 4 January 1980. |
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There are two RTC tests that can, and should, be performed for PC machines: |
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1. Rollover. Set the date to 31 December 1999. Set the time to 23:58:00. Check the date and time. Switch power off. Wait 5 minutes. Switch power on. Check the date and time, which should be a few minutes after midnight on 1 January 2000. |
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2. Continuity. Set the date to 1 January 2000. Check the date. Switch power off. Wait 1 minute. Switch power on. Check the date, which should be 1 January 2000. |
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Many PC machines fail one or both of these tests, and reset to a date such as 4 January 1980. At the time of writing, 80% of the roughly 80 million PC machines in existence may fail these tests. |
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In this section, I briefly consider some resources to help solve the Y2K problem. |
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1.8.5.1
Tools and Consulting Services |
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At the present time, there are at least 100 vendors selling Y2K solutions of one sort or another. Most are some class of methodology tool that will find and fix lines of code in an automated way. |
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There are two fundamental limitations with such tools. First, no tool will find and fix all instances of Y2K. Second, most of the tools are written for COBOL and, more specifically, for COBOL on IBM mainframes. Outside this one large environmental niche, far fewer tools are available. The good news, of course, is that a market awaits the ambitious reader. |
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1.8.5.2
Internet Resources |
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There are a number of FAQs and Web pages dedicated to Y2K, with more jumping on the bandwagon every day as Y2K becomes yet another form of Web-chum. Interested readers should browse for "year 2000." A good source at the time of writing was the Year 2000 Information Center at |
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