A Proposal for Y2K Patches for V5.03 of RT-11

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Fri Dec 8 21:14:11 2000

For a number of years, I have been producing Y2K patches
for various versions of RT-11 for commercial purposes. At
this time, I would like to produce a set for V5.03 of RT-11.
This set will initially be for hobby users and will be made
available free of charge to anyone who complies with the
current hobby license agreements available for hobby users.
Later, these same Y2K patches will be made available to all
users in the RT-11 community.

This proposal is being circulated so as to alert those interested
parties as well as to allow for useful feedback that will allow
the best choice to be made for the base year.

I have been attempting for months now to decide what are the
reasons for doing all of this, but I finally decided that anyone who
understands will not care and anyone who does not will not realize
why I bothered. So the following criteria were used:

(a) One requirement will be that dates can be maintained by the
RT-11 operating system and associated software for a considerable
period into the future. In addition, there is at present a unique
opportunity to extend the date range back into the past. The first
will be done. The second is open to question.

(b) Any method which is proposed MUST, in my opinion,
be able to function with and be compatible with all current software
which handles dates for the ranges for which those programs
were designed and written - so long as the actual dates being
represented by the date words (there must obviously now be
more than one) are in the same range as the values for which
the programs were designed. Thus, all programs designed to
function only from 1973 to 1999 must be able to do so.
For V5.07 of RT-11, as well as software written by others
(myself included) for the dates from 1972 to 2099, the
same criteria MUST apply. This means that all the different
versions of all different software can function correctly and
coexist between 1973 and 1999. From 2000 to 2099, only
the Y2K versions can coexist with this new software and prior
to 1972 and after 2099, only the Y10K versions will function
correctly.

(c) One additional word shall be reserved which holds the extra
bits required to specify the year before 1972 and after 2099.

A number of other technical details are also available, but until
a decision is made on the base year, it is doubtful that they are
important. I have a number of points to consider to help in
choosing a base year, but until I see some feedback on the
basic proposal, even just the Y2K patches for V5.03 of
RT-11, I doubt that there is much point in presenting them.

If the above proposal is satisfactory, then coding will continue for the
Y10K modifications for V5.03 of RT-11. Feedback is requested,
especially on the question of using extended dates prior to 1972.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Fri Dec 08 2000 - 21:14:11 GMT