'Year 2000' Bugs Could Go Far Beyond
Computers
By ROGER MADOFF
c.1997 Bloomberg News
EW YORK -- Oil pipelines. Building alarms. Voice-mail
recorders. Radiation therapy systems.
Those are just a few items on the expanding list of devices that
engineers are concerned may falter when the calendar flips to Jan. 1,
2000.
These machines contain scores of computer chips -- and many are
susceptible to the Year 2000 problem that plagues big computer
systems. The chips house clocks that can't count past the millennium.
That is, when 2000 arrives they will think it's 1900.
''It's a major problem,'' said Jim Lott, a senior product manager at
Dallas Semiconductor Corp., the world's largest maker of such chips.
Some 85 percent of the ''real-time'' clocks sold today by Dallas
Semiconductor can't understand dates after 2000.
The silver lining here is that most embedded chips, which number in
the billions, won't stop working in 2000. A watch will keep ticking
even though it thinks it's 1900. A VCR will keep playing tapes though
it will have trouble recording because it won't recognize 2000 as a
leap year.
Engineers and programmers are far from panicking over the faulty
chips, Lott said. Often, they simply can write software that tricks
machines into understanding post-2000 dates. Still, with less than
three years to react, many customers may not switch in time.
''There will people who won't buy this, for whatever reason,'' said
David Ladd, chief technical officer at Octel Communications Corp.,
the No. 1 maker of voice-mail systems, which last week agreed to be
bought by Lucent Technologies Inc. Getting ready for 2000, said
Ladd, is ''just inconvenient as hell.''
One big chore is simply counting the chips. ''It's going to be a major
job for anyone just to get the inventory,'' said Bill Grimes, a
technology planner heading up Year 2000 projects for Austin, Texas.
Grimes' office just assembled a list of everything city-owned that might
contain embedded chips.
It includes elevators, streetlights, alarm systems, sprinklers, libraries,
motion sensors, waste water plants and golf caddie shacks.
The problem of locating chips is especially acute on the factory floor,
where complete lists of equipment are rare.
''Companies do not have a good idea at all of what's running in their
plants,'' said Ken Owen, who started a year 2000 consulting unit for
Fluor Daniel.
Some of the areas in factories that need to be inspected are
''production and controls, laboratory information systems, smart
instrumentation and black boxes and embedded systems,'' not to
mention the links with suppliers and utilities, he said.
Fluor Daniel is the engineering arm of Fluor Corp., the world's largest
engineering and construction company. So far, Fluor Daniel has four
clients for whom it's working on year 2000-related maintenance.
Owen said the small number is due partly to the fact that information
technology consultants don't understand the factory environment, and
so they downplay the issue.
Government is starting to push companies to fixing their embedded
chips. Last month, the Food and Drug administration recommended
that all medical device makers locate date deficiencies in their
products, assist customers in fixing those already sold and assure that
new products won't malfunction because of the date change.
Already, the FDA knows that some radiation treatment planning
systems will experience problems if left unchecked, according to
Thomas B. Shope, who heads the FDA's electronics and computer
sciences unit.
By reading 00 as 1900 instead of 2000, certain treatment planners will
miscount how long it's been since the therapy machine was last
serviced -- and recommend giving an improper dosage of radiation to
a patient.
Such potentially life-threatening defects are rare, Shope said.
After spending a year asking companies to identify potential problems,
he compiled a short list of products, including some
electrocardiographs and record-keeping software, which will churn
out bad information if left unchecked.
In the oil industry, major pipelines could have trouble monitoring oil
flow and maintenance schedules of shut-off valves, according to a
study by Jim Porter of Harvard, Porter & Associates.
''These are not as critical as valves malfunctioning,'' he said. ''Still,
revenue readings are quite important.''
There is a possibility of a shutdown or spill at an oil pipeline, although
the probability is slim, said Porter, formerly a chief information officer
at Atlantic Richfield Co.
At Federal Express Corp., a year 2000 program began last month.
''It wasn't obvious at first that an elevator would be mission critical,''
said Cynthia Hubard, who heads the package delivery company's year
2000 effort. ''Or that burglar alarms would shut down if they haven't
been serviced in a long time.'' Finishing the work, she said, will take
until fall 1999.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which sets rules for FedEx and
other airlines, expects to complete its assessment of the 55,000
individual pieces of equipment by the end of this year, said Les Door,
a spokesman. Code conversions and chip replacement will take until
Jan 1, 1999.
''Anything they have found in the terminal automation code is
manageable,'' said Door. ''There is a 'moderate' impact on
maintenance control. Radars aren't date-critical.''
Doomsayers often name airplanes, with their thousands of automated
processes, as susceptible to date-induced mishaps.
Hubard of FedEx said a person who refuses to fly because of safety
concerns on New Year's Eve 2000 isn't overreacting.
''That's pretty good advice.''
nytsyn.com
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