Subject: Bug in Truetime equipment I am a SCADA (computer automation) Technician for a large utility in California. I have been attending Michael Vessey's Y2k conferences. So when I heard about another Counter Register with a ROLLOVER problem I discovered after some research not only will most GPS navigational receivers need a software upgrade some will be unrepairable. The BUG is related to the 1024 Week counter on August 22, 1999 all GPS units will roll from 1023 to 0000 this may cause widespread failures on a large scale!

I started to wonder about all the TIME STANDARD receivers that are tied into most every Telecom site, mainframe computer and Frequency deviation controller for E_GRIDS. So I called the most popular manufacturer of these devices and spoke to the service department. Just as I suspected this is a "BIG PROBLEM"

Please investigate for yourselves and if you would post a response

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0005jR

These are all the industries affected!!! http://www.truetime.com/DOCS/TThomeFRM.html

Here is a service bulletin on Y2k http://www.truetime.com/DOCS/TThomeFRM.html

GPS based time standard devices used to sync all kinds of stuff including the 60 HZ. of the E-Grid having a 1024 week rollover problem on Aug. 22 1999 http://www.truetime.com/DOCS/TThomeFRM.html

-- Anonymous, June 09, 1998

Answers

I found the following report on the Government Computer News site: http://208.228.76.74/gcn/1997/april14/dod.htm

DOD COMPUTING

GCN April 14, 1997

What's to be done with GPS?

Paige says the vital system will be readied and waiting for the year 2000

By Gregory Slabodkin GCN Staff

Of the Defense Department's myriad systems, the Global Positioning System is most vulnerable to malfunction and most likely to suffer devastating consequences due to year 2000 code problems, DOD officials have concluded.

"People are depending on this system far beyond anybody's expectations," said Lt. Col. Rick Reaser, chief engineer for the Navstar GPS Joint Program Office at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif. "People's lives depend on this system, and we take that very seriously."

No play toy

DOD plans for all military aircraft to use GPS for navigation by 2000 and the military's growing dependence on GPS-guided smart bombs have heightened Pentagon concerns about the vulnerability of the navigation system to year 2000 glitches.

First showcased during Operation Desert Storm, GPS has become the source for precise and accurate targeting information for the Tomahawk cruise missile, Joint Direct Attack Munition, Army Tactical Missile System and Joint Standoff Weapon.

"The most significant system today that is not [year 2000] compliant is GPS, which would have more impact than anything else," Emmett Paige Jr., assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, recently told the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology. "Yet I have no doubt that GPS will be ready along with all the other weapon systems and command and control systems in the Department of Defense."

The GPS year 2000 problem is threefold and reflects the three components of the navigation system: the space segment, the ground control segment and the user segment.

GPS consists of 24 operational Navstar satellites mounted on six orbital planes that continuously broadcast navigation signals to ground stations. Specialized computers built into inexpensive, portable GPS receivers in turn derive highly accurate position and velocity information by correlating data uploaded to the satellites from ground stations.

Ground gaffes

According to documents provided to Congress earlier this month by Paige's office, the year 2000 problems within the space segment can be found in two pieces of ground equipment: the Bus Ground Support Equipment vehicle checkout stations and the Boeing Mission Operation Support Center (MOSC).

Software to correct the year 2000 problem in the Bus Ground Support Equipment vehicle checkout stations already exists, and DOD will install it during the normal systems maintenance lifecycle.

But the MOSC date code problem lies in its underlying commercial products. So DOD will replace MOSC with the Integrated Mission Operation Support Center (IMOSC), which it expects to finish in December 1999.

But GPS JPO is working to push the completion date up at least six months to June 1999. The IMOSC project is part of a $1.3 billion GPS Block IIF satellite contract that DOD awarded to Boeing Co. last April.

The GPS ground control segment consists of six monitor stations, four ground antennas and a master control station. The software needing date code fixes generates the uplink code to the satellites. It was written in the 1970s and uses only two-digit date fields.

The original plan was to replace the old code as part of a modernization of the ground control segment, or Architecture Evolutionary Plan (AEP). But schedule delays have pushed AEP's operational beginning to mid-2000.

"It looks like that schedule is slipping out," Reaser said. "The replacement system may or may not be there in time for year 2000 rollover. So what we're going to do is upgrade the current system to be Y2K-tolerant as sort of the backup plan which may become our primary plan."

Plan B

GPS JPO officials have decided to rewrite some of the existing legacy code for the ground control segment at a cost of $7.6 million. Lockheed Martin Federal Systems has been assessing the code and will rewrite it under an existing maintenance contract. Until then, GPS JPO will incrementally integrate modifications as part of its normal software maintenance releases.

Though the GPS user segment does not have a year 2000 problem per se, it does have a clock overflow problem, the Z-count rollover. This rollover occurs every 1,024 weeks; the first one comes in August 1999.

GPS' user segment consists of the antennas and receiver-processors that provide positioning, velocity and precise timing to the users, such as the Army handheld GPS receivers and Navy shipboard receivers. Although GPS JPO established specifications for GPS receivers, some manufacturers did not account for the Z-count rollover in the satellites' atomic clocks, which synchronize the navigational signals.

To date, the only GPS receivers that GPS JPO has identified as having the Z-count rollover problem are older Rockwell-Collins 3A airborne receivers and 3S shipboard receivers with Link 40 software.

As part of scheduled depot maintenance, users must manually reset affected receivers. Those with flash memory or removable programmable read-only memory can be reset easily to accommodate the rollover. Users will have to replace altogether any receivers that cannot be reset.

-- Anonymous, June 11, 1998

Time Standard Devices are everywhere

That was a very interesting post about the Mainframe support systems for the GPS infrastraucture having some problems. However the point I am trying to raise involves a device that uses GPS,GOES satellite, WWV or LORAN signals to generate a clock output down to 25 nanoseconds. In peticular the GPS unit which has been the industry choice for the last 5 years or so is susceptible to a rollover problem of the "Z" register. If end users have not verified with manufacturers compliance (You can not easily test for bug) systems such as networks, celfone sites, telecom sites, remote data access sites, power grid's 60 hertz control systems could go down on August 22, 1999. Does anybody have time standard devices at their facilities? What do your manufactures recommend?

-- Anonymous, June 12, 1998