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Technology Stocks : WDC/Sandisk Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Done, gone. who wrote (1375)	11/7/1997 12:37:00 PM
From: Mike Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

>>>Did I say Cobol? Nope, I don't think so. I said embedded systems. Chips in particular. The manufacture of said chips to be precise. Sorry, I miss this. Sandbag does not write embedded software either, in fact it has nothing to do with software, period. It makes that little chip of the size of a stamp with sand (silicon), so that people can store the favorite pictures of their love ones, or messages, or phone directory, or street map, or software, or etc. you name it. If you fix program stored in a ROM or a eeprom, you just pull out the chip, put in the new software, and put back the chip on the circuit board. It's like when you replace the engine of your old VW, you buy an used or new VW engine and put in your car, but you don't redesign the engine compartment to fit in a V8 engine. Btw, not too many embedded systems software has problem with year 2000. Most embedded systems is used to control a device, or engine, therefore it has no date info in it. Kind like the engine control or security system in your car, it will work forever and will not fail even after year 3000 as long as the hardware still works. I know this because my real job besides playing with stocks is in designing embedded systems. Sorry to divert from the subject of Sandbag but one more time, this company has nothing to do with year 2000 or software in general. Back to my boring real job.

To: Done, gone. who wrote (1375)	11/7/1997 2:21:00 PM
From: phoenix	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 60323

Mike Winn is correct. Plants will not shut down on Jan 1, 2000, because the controllers don't care what the date is. I am an electrical engineer and have designed control systems using programmable logic controllers and operator interface systems (e.g. Wonderware, Genesis) for over 17 years. None of my systems will have any real hiccup as a result of y2k. It would be rare indeed to find programming within a PLC that would base any control activity on a date. Reason is, as a designer, you never know when the initialization time occurs. That is, time zero, such as after a shutdown. I have spent much time on offshore oil production platforms, have operating designs on at least five platforms, and will sleep very nicely Dec 31, 1999. The only problem I see is within the supervisory systems that may use a date for generating trend data. Typically, this is done by a PC and may require some adjustments for management to get proper reports. But, unless I am missing something here, the PLCs controlling the plants, factories, oil production platforms, etc. will keep humming along. Roger