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Technology Stocks : Y2K damage reports -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Christine Traut who wrote (86)	12/29/1999 1:56:00 PM
From: dclapp	Respond to of 286

Christine, Nice post, thanks. This is from Datamation magazine -- the article is over a year old, but still, I would guess, relevant... . . . "What's the point in spending millions of dollars fixing your computer systems, if you don't have phones, elevators, or heat come January 1, 2000?" asks Michael Harden, president and CEO of Century Technology Services, a consulting company and vendor of Y2K remediation services in McLean, Va. "This is a global Easter egg hunt, and you don't know how many eggs are out there so you'll never know if you've found all of them," says Brian Kishline, manager of systems engineering for Data Dimensions, a software vendor and consulting company in Bellevue, Wash. Once you do sniff out these rotten eggs, the dubious payoff is the cumbersome process of contacting the vendor--if it's still in business--to determine the Y2K compliance status of the device (See "Caught in the Y2K time crunch? Compliance databases can help"). Then, if the device is not Y2K compliant, it's generally a matter of replacing or retiring the device altogether. Fixing the code is generally not an option, since usually you won't have access to the source code. With less than 500 days to go, time is too short for most companies to contemplate code repair for the myriad of distributed devices containing embedded systems at their premises. The scope of the problem It's easy to ignore embedded systems, since they are necessarily hidden from view (see "On the lookout: a 14-step methodology"). But, hard as it may be to fathom, experts say the Y2K problems inherent in embedded systems are much broader in scope--and potentially much more expensive to fix--than those of business computer systems. Like the Y2K issue in general, the embedded systems piece of the problem is fraught with uncertainty. No one can say for sure how many embedded systems are out there and how many will fail come 2000. Since it's impossible to determine the scope of the embedded systems problem, it's likewise impossible to specify how much it will cost U.S. businesses to fix the problem. From interviews with the top logic chip manufacturers, Harden estimates that approximately 5 billion of the 70 billion chips produced since 1972 are subject to Y2K problems. "The question is, how do you go through the 70 billion to find the 5 billion that will have a problem? It's the quintessential needle in a haystack," he says. Andrew Bochman of the Aberdeen Group thinks the problem rate is much higher than Harden puts it. "From what my clients are saying, I'm looking at a trouble rate of about 20%" of all devices containing embedded systems, says Bochman, senior analyst for Year 2000 services at Aberdeen, a Boston-based IT consulting company. And Aberdeen's manufacturing clients report spending three to four times as much on their embedded systems remediation efforts compared with their computer systems. Whatever that figure might be will only be determined in hindsight, but whatever the amount is, it's a lot of money.

To: Christine Traut who wrote (86)	12/29/1999 4:02:00 PM
From: Cruiser	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 286

Christine - I wrote a reponse to this and then it disappeared ...maybe Y2K related?? :-) more likely user error. Thanks for your response. Unfortunately I dont think this or the articles referenced explain it. Time used in embedded devices especially in the "trillions" of chips you are concerned about, have absolutely no knowledge of the actual time in terms of day/month/year. In embedded systems (which I have been involved in designing for 25 years), time is a reference clock usually in the millisecond accuracy range. samples of something are made over a particular time interval -a very small time interval. The embedded systems that might be of concern are much more sophisticated devices employing microcontrollers, Flash memory, NVRAM, etc. In these devices, the current time, if available, must be set by a human. Time isnt somehow just known. As the device is moved from location (i.e. shipped from Taiwan) the time or the location, would have to be set. The point about having to set the time is that this rules out the vast majority of the devices which you reference and are fearful of (medical devices, pumps, heat valves, etc). In the VCR example two points. Which VCRs allow you to program a show a year in advance? not very useful if it did since you still have to add the blank tape. :-) And if you have a time comparison problem it could mean that if you attempted to program your VCR to record from 11:30PM 12/31 to 12:30 AM 1/1 then it could not stop recording for 100 years more ...but you would have recorded at least the 1 hour ... and I cant imagine that is a problem any cares about. I'll watch here for more incite into this... Cruiser