A new millennium.
For some, it strikes fear. Earthquakes, war, the Antichrist (and the return of Jesus Christ). Nostradamus stuff. As the year 2000 approaches, the crazies are coming out of the woodwork.
But there's one prediction that has many computer people worried: Jan. 1, 2000, computers all over the world will become hopelessly confused. The result: lost or corrupted data. The problem lies in the date.
Many older computers (including most DOS-based machines) store dates in a MM/DD/YY format, so Dec. 31, 1999, is 12/31/99, and the following day is 01/01/00. This was done originally to save space in those crowded 256K PCs, and the convention stuck.
Those two zeros can be confusing for a computer. If your computer is running accounting or invoicing software, how will it know that your December 1999 invoices are overdue in February 2000? After all, 00 minus 99 is, well, zero or -99 or something equally strange. That's the premise behind the message of Peter de Jager, a Canadian computer consultant.
At his home page on the World Wide Web (http://www.year2000.com), he warns computer managers that there are only a couple of years left to solve the problem before disaster occurs. According to Jager, the problem will affect most businesses, and the majority of computer managers aren't doing anything.
Who's president nowadays?
Even if a business starts preparing now, it might be hard-pressed to fix the problem by the turn of the century. If things aren't fixed, here's what will happen, according to Jager: Friday, Dec. 31, 1999, ''more than 80,000,000 PCs will be switched off as people leave work. On Jan. 1st, 2000, more than 80,000,000 PCs will think the Berlin wall is still standing and that Trudeau is still the prime minister of Canada. . . .''
Most PC networks will think that Jan. 1, 2000, is Jan. 1, 1980.
Not the end of time, but this could still pose problems for most businesses, which rely on computers to track time-sensitive transactions.
While Jager is preaching doom, others are skeptical about just how serious a problem it is. No one doubts that the 6-digit date format will need correcting in the next couple of years, but many think it's not that big a deal to change.
Nicholas Zvegintzov, a software consultant and technical writer, counters in an essay (also posted on Jager's web site) that the problem is really a racket.
''Dealing with the Year 2000 problem is a simple software task,'' Zvegintzov writes. ''It is clear when the problem arises (at the end of the century). It is clear what it will do (confuse calculations performed with dates). The places where the problem arises are easy to find in software code.''
He's not concerned and doesn't think most computer users should be either. ''Solving the Year 2000 problem is an exercise for the software novice,'' he says. So, is all this worth worrying about?
Macs not affected
Well, if the only computer you manage is the one in your house, here's a simple test to see: Set the date on your computer to Dec. 31 1999, and the time to five minutes to midnight. Power the computer off. Wait 10 minutes, and turn the computer back on. Check the date and time. If the computer thinks it's a few days before Ronald Reagan's inauguration, then you probably should think about a fix.
Skip the test if you use a Mac. They aren't affected.
The date problem lies in the PC hardware. The PC keeps two dates, one in the CMOS Real Time Clock chip (on the motherboard) and another in DOS.
When the computer boots up, DOS reads the date from the RTC chip and converts it into days from 1/1/1980. But the RTC chip is stuck in the 20th century. So when you boot your computer Jan. 1, 2000, the RTC chip will think it's the year 1900, and DOS will convert that to days since 1/1/1980, ending up with the date Jan. 4, 1980.
You might be able to skirt the problem by leaving your computer on during the change of the year (you can test that also by advancing the date and waiting, then powering off and on to see if your computer holds the correct date).
Or you can download a tiny program which claims to adjust the CMOS clock to hold the correct time. Called Year2000.exe, it's available at http://rampages.onramp.net/~gtbecker. Or email Info@RighTime.Com for more information.
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at cbrewer@enquirer.com.
