I have been following the TD effect since last year; it is real and only now getting more media attention. Potentially many older PC's (386, 486 even older pentium boxes) may well have this problem.
Think of the millions of older PC's currently running ledger in small business for example, and you get the message. Not a pretty one IMO.
Harlan Smith is one of the best authors on newsgroup c.s.y2k (comp.software.year-2000).
John
___________
'
Time Dilation -- Where Are We Now?
By Harlan Smith
November 10, 1998
[This article was submitted for publication on
1998-11-08, the day before the excellent NY Times
article appeared at "Dispute on a Wrinkle in the Year
2000 Problem" by Barnaby J. Feder. That article
offers a very clear explanation of the history of Time
Dilation, the present status of investigation,
Compaq's decision to suspend sale of TD Tools (a
utility designed to test for and fix Time Dilation) and
the actions Compaq has launched to further
investigate the problem). I believe that this will be the first involvement
of Compaq with Time Dilation. The Time Dilation effort was
commenced by Digital, before they sold to Compaq. I recommend that
my readers read that article first, to put my remarks in context.
Harlan Smith
1998-11-09]
On Friday, 16 Oct 1998 Barry Pardee, Americas Year 2000 Expertise
Center Manager, Compaq Computer Corporation announced:
[snip]
We at Compaq and Digital have confirmed that the Crouch Echlin
Effect, also referred to as Time Dilation (TD), is real and is a potential
threat to PCs, servers, and embedded systems that use unbuffered real
time clocks. Although we have not seen any TD symptoms on any
Compaq or Digital PCs, many of our Customers have a mixture of
various brands PCs that should be checked. Also, the use of
non-manufacturer parts for repairs or upgrades may introduce potential
TD problems into any PC. Hundreds of requests for the TD Tools (as
described at the following URL) have been received by
Compaq/Digital, along with reports of similar Time/Date anomalies,
during post Year 2000 testing...We have made the decision to resell
the TD Tools.
TD Tools was developed by Mike Echlin of Yeovil Systems Research
and Development Inc. of Canada, in conjunction with Jace Crouch, to
test for and fix Time Dilation, or the Crouch Echlin effect, a newly
discovered, little known problem with the interaction between the
RTC/CMOS, BIOS, and Operating System, mainly occurring on the IBM
Compatible PC or its derivatives. [end snip]
So-called Time Dilation was originally reported by Jace Crouch on
comp.software.year-2000 in a message thread archived at
www.nethawk.com/~jcrouch/td01.txt that contains the early discussion
of that phenomena. It was originally dubbed "Time Dilation" because
the first guess about the cause of the observed phenomena was that
the computer clock was running fast. Later it was realized that, at start
up, the RTC (Real Time Clock) was being read during the update of its
output shift register, causing bad data to be propagated to the BIOS
clock.
Shortly after Jace discovered the phenomenon, Mike Echlin began to
research this thought-to-be unique phenomenon and it was soon
dubbed "The Crouch/Echlin" effect, for its discoverer and principal
investigator. It is also occasionally referred to as "Time/Date Jump,"
which I prefer because it is descriptive of the fact that, occurring
randomly and infrequently at PC boot up, the BIOS clock time and/or
date can jump forward or backward.
The story of Y2K is documented at the above reference but a more
concise description appears in Computer World of Canada, April 1998
issue. Two Time Dilation articles in that issue are accessible via
lti.on.ca . Click on the search button at the left, enter "Echlin"
in the search box and the two articles will appear in a list.
I have been following this highly-controversial "Crouch/Echlin Effect"
story ever since Jace Crouch reported its discovery in August 1997.
Here's a description of what it is and why it's a controversial headache:
....
y2ktimebomb.com |
