But aren't there many machines that keep track of time and date? I've
heard that credit cards are starting to fail if their expiration date
is 2000. I don't know why all the fuss about the control tower
computers or power plants (all scheduling should be doublechecked by
humans anyway), but I'm sure there may be problems with checks/bills.
>< >with in 1975, still running the same code.
><
>< Sure, I can imagine that. But I can't imagine it will stop working
>< on January 1, 2000, or that the clock couldn't be set back to 1975
>< without affecting the milling.
>
>Correction, what clock? Most control apps clocks are intervals, time
>between events, maybe time of day or week for longer periods and its
>rare that they even consider time of year.
>
>Keep in mind that until sometime past 1981ish clocks were not chips
that
>kept time of day/year. Of ten they were a periodic interrupt that was
>totalized for time and date. So if the clock was broken it was
software
>not hardware.
>
>The one example where Y2K has hit a PDP-8 use was a nuke power plant
>and the PDP-8 doing data logging had to print the right time date on
>the page. If the time and date were wrong nothing stopped working
>but the NRC would be upset with the dataing of the logs. FYI: Y2K
>happens to hit every 7-8 years on PDP-8 OSs as they only use 3bits for
>relative year. Bits used to be expensive!
>
>< If the source code has existed in some form since the late 50s or
>< early 60s, no programmer since its creation has tinkered with it?
>< I can imagine a slightly more plausible situation in which the source
>< was written in 1961, recompiled and tweaked throughout the Sixties,
>< and somehow the source was lost after recompilation in the Seventies
>< so only the executable remains, and that it's been running in some
>
>This is likely the commonplace event and the machine by the 70s was
>stable platform say like DG Nova, PDP-11 or other that has a lifespan
>exceeding 10+ years or still being made.
>
>Lost in some cases means it exists and somewhere on a backup that is
>in a room with 10,000 tapes of other backups that no one has looked
>at for 7+ years.
>
>Heck my vax archive is over 7 years old and is more than 20 TK50s. I
>don't recycle major backups as I've had tapes fail. So the deeper the
>archive the less likely the loss and also harder to find a specific
>item. This is only hobby use. business should do this far more often.
>
>< It's not that I'm denying Y2K - it's that I think it's overblown,
>< especially when it comes to antique computers.
>
>Me too. Many system Y2K is a singular event or non event. The only
>ones I even think about in relation to it are the PCs and maybe the
>VAXen (I run VMS 5.3 to 5.5). The PDP-11s may not like the date but
>most of the stuuff I do is not date centric so unless the OS breaks it
>keeps cranking. The PC makes me worry as DOS/Win and internetorking
>software may have bombs I don't know nor can fix myself. I've bumped
the
>clock and it seems to behave though.
>
>Allison
>
>
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Received on Thu Oct 22 1998 - 15:02:54 BST