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by Beverly Rosenbaum

Part 2 • Surviving the “Millennium Bug”

Will your PC make it past the year 2000? Here’s how to test your PC, and what to do if it fails the test!

Should you simply set the time and date on your computer to 23.59 on December 31st 1999 and see what happens?

ABSOLUTELY NOT! Many speakers, experts and reporters have suggested doing this as a test. But you should NEVER ATTEMPT a date advance while connected to a network, or on a PC with beta software, licensed dated software, or attached to any other system, because you can do considerable damage. Here’s how to safely simulate December 31, 1999 and January 1, 2000 dates in your machine. You should start your system from a bootable diskette to avoid loading any time-dependent applications. If you run a scheduler that will automatically delete events in the past it might discard your appointments for next week if you set the date beyond next week.

You can easily determine if your system suffers the year 2000 CMOS RTC (real time clock) flaw. From a DOS prompt (ideally with no CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT) perform the following steps:

 Power off test:

 C:>DATE 12-31-1999

 C:>TIME 23:59

 - Power off for more than one minute,

 - Power on. Allow the system to boot.

 - Check the DOS date. It should be 01-01-2000. If it’s not (it’s usually 01-04-1980), the machine exhibits the year 2000 flaw.

Power on test:

 C:>DATE 12-31-1999

 C:>TIME 23:59

 - Wait for more than one minute; you can watch an on-screen clock if you like (but not the BIOS Setup clock screen).

 - Check that the DOS year has changed to 2000.

 - Reboot. The DOS year should still be 2000.

Check to see if your year 2000 is a leap year:

 C:>DATE 02-29-2000

 - If you get an error, the BIOS is incorrect. Year 2000 will be a leap year, so this setting should be valid.

Do NOT perform these tests from the BIOS Setup screen. The BIOS will likely wrap the date from 12-31-1999 to 01-01-1980 (or 1994), not to the normal 01-01-1900, invalidating the test.

Doschk.exe (Bob Stammers, Sephena Computing), Ymark2000 (National Software Testing Labs, a division of McGraw-Hill Companies), and Willit (Small Business Help Shop, Australia) are three utilities that automate this test for you. They will all be posted on the HAL-PC BBS.

If your system fails and you repeat these tests with Tom Becker / RighTime Company’s freeware utility Year2000.Com installed, you will see correct results because this type of utility applies a simple rule: if the CMOS RTC two-digit year (in CMOS address 9) is less than 80 the century (in CMOS address 50d, or 55d for PS/2 machines) is assumed to be 20, otherwise the century is assumed to be 19. This makes the resulting year range 1980 through 2079. The century change rule must be applied at two times: at boot, to cover the likelihood that the year change has occurred while powered off, and, when powered on, at ea ch time the CMOS RTC two-digit year changes (which only occurs once each year at New Year’s Eve midnight). Year2000.Com uses standard periodic interrupts to test for this occasion. If, when Year2000.Com loads, the year is already 2000 or greater, it will not remain resident since the program then serves no purpose. When it is resident, it occupies less than 700 bytes, uses trivial processor time, and should exhibit no compatibility problems. Look for it on the HAL-PC BBS.

For DOS and Windows, Year2000.Com should be executed early in the AUTOEXEC.BAT. For example, if you choose to put Year2000.Com in a directory you’ve named Y2K on your C: disk drive, you must place this statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: C:\Y2K\Year2000.Com. The program will work properly under DOS through Windows 95.

For OS/2, drop the Year2000.Com program object in the Startup folder. Select Session Options to run in a minimized DOS window if you wish; no other settings are required.

No “Silver Bullet” Solution

Given the multitude of computer programming languages in use and the variety of business uses for date fields, computer experts feel that no single “silver bullet” remedy exists to correct the Year 2000 problem. In fact, over 140 vendors currently market software tools to analyze and correct the Year 2000 problem. Even if you have corrected the problem on your own personal system, any non-compliant system to which you connect will corrupt your date again.

Changing the date on a mainframe application is not a simple matter. Every reference to a date must be changed, in every program and file in use, archived, and stored. Since an estimated 40% of companies have either lost or thrown away their original “so urce” code, this becomes a very large problem. Just moving from 2 to 4 digits is not as easy as it sounds. Experts are still arguing about what form the solution should take. Should the fields be expanded or some innovative methodology used to fool the s ystem? And if the field is expanded, the change must be standardized for global commerce, as we know it, to continue.

Gartner Group, Inc., an information technology research firm, has estimated that it could cost between $300 billion to $600 billion to correct the Year 2000 problem worldwide.

This would be very time-consuming, requiring considerable programming effort to examine millions of lines of source code (software code readable by a human programmer) in order to locate the six digit date fields and correct them.

For example, The Prudential Insurance Company of America reportedly expects to correct approximately 125 million lines of code at a cost of approximately $150 million.

Although the costs of corrective action vary from company to company, it is not unusual to find reports as high as $1.10 per line of source code to correct the date field problem.

However, these costs may be overestimated if companies take this opportunity instead to modify existing hardware/software system, or migrate to new hardware/software platforms or architectures.

Companies with an aging mainframe system may instead choose to migrate to a decentralized client/server system with local area networks and wide area networks.

Keep an eye out for non-PC systems, as well — software in automatic teller machines, security systems, copy machines, or special embedded devices that activate elevators.

Watch this column and we will keep you posted during the countdown as software and hardware vendors make patches and compliant products available.

Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member.

E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.

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Last modified: 1997:08:31