Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00238)

As my job in Information Technology often deals with Y2K as we call it I
will offer some advice:

Home PC's uses the BIOS and battery to store the date in 6 digits that is
DD/MM/YY (or MM/DD/YY) when the YY becomes 00 it doesn't actually effect
anything unless it makes a date calculation. For example, an automated
kindergarten greeting system checks the birthdates of all people in a given
area and checks it against the current date. If the age is in a given range
the system sends out a letter saying 'you will start kindy soon' . The
problem occurs then when the 00 (of 2000) has no century reference. So in
this case a woman born in 1895 will be only 5 years old to the PC and will
thus receive a letter.
Apple users, 99% pentium users and most other post 1993-4 machines will be
fine. If you have a PC that is not in this category you will still be fine
in terms of Hard Drives etc, the problem will be with applications like
Excel that refer to date/time.
Remember though, it doesn't just affect your PC - many other household
electronic products have a date/time function. Check with the manafacturer
for items like House Alarms.

At 01:48 PM 6/11/98 EDT, you wrote:
>In a message dated 98-06-11 09:38:32 EDT, you write:
>
><< Can we transfer our files on to a more modern hard drive without
> the possibility of loosing them when that date strikes our Hard
> Drive memories ? >>
>
>How would the 2000 snafu, sometimes called the Millenium Bug, affect our
>individual hard drives? Web browers, perhaps, but a hard drive on someone's
>PC? I thought it would just affect big main frames in banks, government
>agencies ( Social Security Administration, the IRS, etc), traffic
controllers,
>large corporations, etc. I'm not a computer nerd so this will have to be
>explained to me.
>
>Lmhem111
>
>Lmhem111
>
>
>
>
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