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Conference 7.286::dcu

Title:	DCU
Notice:	1996 BoD Election results in 1004
Moderator:	CPEEDY::BRADLEY

Created:	Sat Feb 07 1987
Last Modified:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1041
Total number of notes:	18759

990.0. "DCU and the year 2000" by STARCH::WHALEN (Rich Whalen) Thu Apr 25 1996 20:39

    This evening, after talking to an information center employee about an
    account issue, I asked if the DCU was examining its software for
    potential problems occuring when the year changes to 2000.  I said that
    I didn't expect that she would be able to give me an answer quickly. 
    After explaining the potential for problems I was given the answer of
    "that's a long way away, so there is no need to worry about it yet."  I
    informed the person I was talking to that many firms that deal with
    money have already started to look into the problem as it is expected
    to require quite a bit of programming work to deal with the problem. 
    She told me that she would relay the concern to her manager, which
    satisfied my request - making sure that DCU management is aware of the
    problem and that its owners/depositors are also aware of it and need to
    be assured that things will work correctly.
    
    Rich

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
990.1	don't worry, be happy	HYLNDR::BADGER	Can DO!	`Fri Apr 26 1996 09:10`	5
	reminds me of check 9000 problem and DCU's ability to look ahead. I've been hearing estimates of 40-100Billion to fix the date issue. I hope that DEC learnt after their date75 problem. I doubt it. ed
990.2		STRWRS::KOCH_P	It never hurts to ask...	`Fri Apr 26 1996 09:59`	3
	No, I've seen estimates now that this Year 2000 problem with cost upwards of 600 Billion to fix!
990.3		BULEAN::BANKS		`Fri Apr 26 1996 10:41`	7
	.1: Was DCU even around for Date75? Anyway, DCU ain't DEC. And, as far as DEC is concerned, Date75 never happened, 'cause it happened on an architecture that's politically incorrect.
990.4		STAR::PARKE	True Engineers Combat Obfuscation	`Fri Apr 26 1996 12:00`	8
	Gee, VMS V1.0 supported the year 2000 correctly. (No Date75 here). Now applications, includeing those we may have written, Shudder. Bill
990.5		HYLNDR::BADGER	Can DO!	`Fri Apr 26 1996 13:02`	7
	re .3, may be politically incorrect, but tops-10/20 is/was far more anvanced and suer friendly than VMS will ever be. I won't even speak of UNIX. didn't we see every phoo phoo date75 and ignor it until too late. too bad we can't learn from history. ed
990.6		ROWLET::AINSLEY	DCU Board of Directors Candidate	`Fri Apr 26 1996 15:14`	6
	What was the date75 problem? I'm assuming it was of the date-overflow variety, but what hardware/OS did it affect? Thanks, Bob
990.7		BULEAN::BANKS		`Fri Apr 26 1996 15:57`	15
	Tops-10 used to use a 12 bit creation date field on its file system that more or less represented the number of days since 1964. (More or less because it assumed all months had 31 days.) It was going to overflow on January 5, 1975. The TOPS-10 engineers managed to find three more bits in the retrieval information block in which to extend the date field -- in a place that was neither convenient nor contiguous with the other 12. In fact, the place that was chosen was almost certainly likely to get obliterated if you got any open/rename/create (well, "enter") error, meaning that programs that weren't defensively coded were liable to end up with dates off by a decade or two. Other programs simply had to be updated to acknowledge the existence of the other three bits if they ever wanted to say anything about the creation date. Given all that, from a customer perspective, the Date75 update went pretty smoothly, given all the sweating and recoding done in advance.
990.8		ROWLET::AINSLEY	DCU Board of Directors Candidate	`Mon Apr 29 1996 10:20`	8
	re: .7 That split, non-contiguous field stuff sounds sort of like some of the stuff I remember from RSTS. Thanks, Bob
990.9	now there's a concept!	LGP30::FLEISCHER	without vision the people perish (DTN 227-3978, TAY1)	`Mon Apr 29 1996 18:02`	4
	re Note 990.5 by HYLNDR::BADGER: > anvanced and suer friendly than VMS will ever be. I won't even speak ^^^^