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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (590)	11/30/1997 9:53:00 AM
From: Gerald Underwood	Respond to of 9818

THE YOURDON REPORT-DOMINO EFFECT cutter.com Gerry

To: John Mansfield who wrote (590)	12/5/1997 12:24:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9818

Cash Register and Y2K From: year2000.unt.edu ; Topic 11 (Infrastructure, PCs, & embedded systems); Conversation 2 (you have to log in; but it is free.) 45. Author: Bruce Hevner ( aceracer ) Date: Nov. 18 7:58 AM 1997 Here_are_some_FACTS_to_look_at. I have a Royal#ER246 Cash Register purchased new in 1988 for a small business I had at the time. It has 4 separate departments that it keeps totals for. It has a time and date stamp on the reciept and when taking department totals. Just for fun I dug that thing out and ran the following test. I set the date at 11:58 12-31-99. The date rolled (on or off) to show 00 as the year. I then tried to set the date to Feb 28 to check for leap year. No good. It would not let me make ANY settings using 00 as the year digits. So if you were using this thing it would appear to be working OK for awhile in 2000. BUT if for any reason you wanted to change anything DURING 2000 you would not be able to do so. If for instance you lost power (it has battery backup but only for a certain time) and you lost the date during 2000 you would not be able to reset it. It would take a date with 01 as the year. Now how many small business owners out there have registers/POS systems that act like this,or worse? Ask your local merchants about it and I'll bet you find VERY few who have checked this, or even know what the heck you are talking about! I have been checking my sales reciepts from stores and have not found one that uses 4 digit year. Of course they could be compliant and just displaying a 2 digit year but are they? How many stores do you know of that could stay open making change and keeping track of sales by hand untill their POS can be fixed?

To: John Mansfield who wrote (590)	12/5/1997 12:53:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 9818

Overview of Y2K network problems - SIM forum - by David C. Hall From: year2000.unt.edu ; Topic 11 (Infrastructure, PCs, & embedded systems); conversation 4 (you have to log in; but it is free). 1. Author: David C. Hall ( dhall ) Date: Mar. 6 8:53 AM 1997 There are several potential Year 2000 problems with networks over the normally expected ones with the software. The following list is provided for discussion and expansion: 1. Network drivers: Storing time and date related statistics for monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting. 2. Dates stored in higher level (Seven-layer OSI model) packets: Protocols tend to be order-sensitive. 3. Network operating system: How does it store and use the date/time? 4. Network file structure: How does it use the date? 5. Bridges, routers, gateways: Protocols are extremely time-sensitive. 6. Domains, users, devices and security: depends upon network time stamps for enterprise-wide updates and synchronization. 7. Voice and data communications: Each type of ssytems has a somewhat different time/date dependency. This list is a starting point. If you find other problems, please let us know both the problem(s) and the type of equipment/network. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Author: David C. Hall ( dhall ) Date: May. 16 8:13 AM 1997 I have received two additional examples of network YR2K problems: 1. Bi-directional fiber ring network Network is managed by element manager and has several Operations Support systems. For YR2K test, the system manager's clock was set to 12/31/99, 11:59 PM After rollover, system responded to date query with : Sat Jan 1 00:01:59 EST 2000 However, further testing revealed: Using the date command to set any date past 1999 resulted in the system clock being reset to pre-1975 dates. There were no further alarms from the network elements displayed since the system thought that they were outdated error messages. The element manager's database locked out any further transactions and displayed an error message that the right-to-use license had expired. 2. On another type of network element the system clock was set to 31/12/99: System responded to date query with: Sat Jan 1 00:01:59 EST 2000 When a bulk change request was initiated, the system responded with the error message that: Only future release dates are valid for use with this command. The software module was apparently interpreting an internal "00" date as the year 1900 and refused to process the request because it was a past date. Conclusions: Even if all your network elements and operating system are Yr2K "compliant", you still need to address the potential problems that arise from Network Element to Network Element, NE to Element Manager, and NE to Operating System interworking.