Tony,
FAA is OK!!!! according to this report.
Dorine
11:56 PM ET 07/21/98
US air traffic computers cleared for 2000, says Post
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Aviation Administration
technicians have concluded that a critical mainframe computer
used in the nation's largest air traffic control centers will
function properly in the year 2000, the Washington Post reported
in Wednesday editions.
The determination, reached over the past few weeks by
programmers, came despite warnings from International Business
Machines Corp, the system's manufacturer, that the agency should
replace the equipment.
''The examination has revealed that the (system) will
transition the millennium in a routine manner,'' FAA
Administrator Jane Garvey told the Post in an interview.
The mainframe computers at issue are used at the FAA's 20
air route traffic control centers to track high-altitude
aircraft between airports.
Last October, IBM warned that it lacked the appropriate
skills and tools to determine if the Model 3073 mainframes would
malfunction in the year 2000, by mistaking the year 2000 for the
year 1900, the newspaper reported.
The problem arises because many older computer systems
record dates using only the last two digits of the year. If left
uncorrected, such systems could treat the year 2000 as the year
1900, generating errors or system crashes.
The FAA is planning to replace the mainframes but was unsure
it could complete the process by 2000, so officials embarked on
an aggressive testing program to figure out how the computer
system would be affected, the Post said.
The technicians found that the software that controls the
computer's most basic functions, or microcode, doesn't consider
the last two digits of the year when processing dates.
Instead it stores the year as two-digit number between one
and 32, assuming that 1975 was year one. As a result, they
determined, the system would fail in 2007, but not in 2000.
^REUTERS@
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