To: IngotWeTrust who wrote (10945 ) 4/29/1998 5:53:00 PM From: Wizzer Read Replies (3) | Respond to
Off topic: I would appreciate anyone jumping in if I have made an error in what I am saying. Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of my binary code programming so I am at a disadvantage as to how much more capacity a mainframe computer or PC would need to recognize a 4 digit date, especially a modern one. Ole 49r, I am talking about modern mainframes, not the ones that used to fill a room just do to multiplication. I guess it depends on when the major corporations, businesses, banks and governments bought their mainframes. Maybe someone could definitely say whether or banks and large companies were "somewhat recent" purchasers of main frame systems, but I believe they were. I would not think that they bought them back in the 50's and have been using the same ones since then, although I may be mistaken. Apple could do it when they created their systems, and I find that going back to the 50's as the source of the problem may confuse the issue. The millenium problem is that PCs and IBM based mainframes simply do not recognize the date 2000 in their hardware construction, as we all know. At that point we are at 1900 and that spells trouble for everything that is dated. If I were to change the software controlled settings for the date on my computer to 2002, my computer would show 1902. Those computers did not need to analyze the 4 digit date, they merely needed to have a capacity to have an accurate date for the computer to reference. I still fail to see how that hardware limitation was necessary even 10-15 years ago.
