Well I think I'm a bit of a techie but definitely not a coder. My specialty is running mid-sized computers. I do it as a private business contracting with companies in my locale. I've been in the semiconductor industry for 25 years and running DEC VAX/Alpha VMS computers for the last 15, and doing this independently for the last 9 years. I've done this work at Intel, National Semi, LSI Logic, Sierra Semi, IDT, Altera, Xicor, Chartered Semi, Siemens Corp as well as other places. Several of these are currently active accounts of mine. Over the course of my career I've touched, tuned, tweaked, moved, reconfigured, installed and decommissioned about 100 systems in Europe, US and Asia. Each system supports anywhere from 10 to 100 users. I've worked with four operating system disciplines over the years DOS, Unix, MPE, but mostly my favorite VMS. I walk into several computer rooms daily. I see a lot of stuff in these places and talk a lot with the guys running the PC servers, networks, Unix servers, and the like. So yeah, I know a thing or two about computers.
So yes, the ATM comment was a particularly interesting question. Don't know what they run. I'm thinking a lot of banks use Tandem for their servers, but I've seen a lot of VT style monitors on banking systems so perhaps they also use some DEC equipment. Possibly some are running AS400s and definitely most of the big ones will have a large IBM/MVS and VM installed as their host servers. ATMs are pretty simple minded little things and could well have a PC board as a base, but they wouldn't need all of DOS to provide the functionality that ATMs give so they could be anything really. They must have good communications so some sort of synchronous link to the local host is a must.
Basically the Y2K issue comes down to people like myself attending to upgrades to the OS, layered products and applications that run on these servers. In the medium to big sized companies there is a subgroup of IT people who will handle the roll out of Y2K fixes to PCs. End users will be spared the concern for this detail except where their own apps like scripted Excel spreadsheets breakdown. These guys will know where on the net to get their software patches. So I guess I'm of the "Where's the beef ?" bias when it comes to Y2K.
Contingency plans are well underway at the larger companies, and they are sending out all sorts of queries to their supplier chains beating them into awareness of this issue. These in turn are also doing their preparatory things to deal with the eventuality. Mind you a lot of the code and a lot of the computers will keep working without anything major happening anyway. For those isolated PC users who work with older versions of DOS and don't somehow hear about this problem in the meantime, can simply let their computer work with the clock set back in time. No big deal really. In fact in early DOS days, that happened all the time. If I remember correctly 1/1/80 was the favorite timestamp for several of my PCs at boot time. Most companies and people can plan a Y2K avoidance strategy by obsoleting older hardware and software and replace with new releases of either. PCs are functionally obsolete within 18 months so the machines we are sitting at today are likely to be replaced by that millennial event anyway.
$80 or $40 or even $10 is a pretty steep price to pay for a URL list of sites that contain Y2K patches. With browser functionality being handed out today for zero dollars, its a hard sell to convince people they need to spend anything on a one time used product that just tells them where to go on the net to find a patch.
Now biodegradable kitty litter is another thing. I'm no expert but cats need to cr&p and will continue to do so in the next millennium. The question though, in my mind is shelf space. I note that CSHK plans on spending more than what its Y2K product is supposed to bring in, promoting their litter product. Will that be enough to buy the shelf space needed ? I dunno, as I said, no expert. But it does sound like their planning to spend their Y2K revenue stream down the ol bunghole. |
