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To: John Mansfield who wrote (18497)	6/16/1998 5:14:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 31646

Repost - ''...each embedded system or piece of equipment MUST be treated as a unique system' From: "david c hall/tatd/73158" <ftrdch@naic.wpafb.af.mil> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 15:49:09 -0500 To: year2000-discuss@year2000.com Subject: Re: Embedded Systems (was Compliance: Vehicles and Y2K - TEST THEM) Every embedded sytems test that I am aware of has verified the assumption that each embedded system or piece of equipment MUST be treated as a unique system. Even the same models of equipment react to Year 2000 dates differently. Think about the hardware involved. The basic chips, RTCs, motherboards, BIOS, etc. HAVE HAD NO DATE STANDARD as far as 2000 dates are concerned. So how can anyone assume that no matter what pieces of hardware you use, they will all react the same at the macro level? Each "black box" is made up of numerous vendor specific "sub black boxes" that are made up of (and so on). Not one of the vendors up this build chain has EVER known exactly what the subvendor put into their "black box". So once you get to the actual installed system level, there may be a dozen subvendors, all with different chips in each of their "sub black boxes". And each of these chips was bought from the cheapest manufacturer on some day and thrown into a pile. When needed, a chip (since each one was built to the same specs) was picked up and used. Whose chip it was, no one cared. Well, now we need to care. And because there was no manufacturing standard for 2000 dates, each chip, even ones from the same manufacturer, may (WILL) react to year 2000 dates differently. THEREFORE, each embedded system, or piece of equipment, or PC, or anything using chips, MUST be tested as if it was unique. There can be NO generic tests used for any reason on equipment with chips. Sorry about that. This is reality as proven by testing and documentation searches. This is one of the reasons why I persist in noting that embedded ssytems will cost the world at least four times as much to remediate (or fix failures) as mainframe systems. $600 Billion X 4 = $2400 billion ? Sounds like a dumb number? Well try and calculate how much the world has spent over the past fifty years putting chips into everything. This is probably a very small percentage. But it is a tremendous sum to pay over the next few years. Especially since most of it will go for nonexistant manpower. Dave Hall Opinions are my own and not those of my employer dhall@enteract.com SIM Year 2000 Working Group Infrastructure Topic Manager