I'm a senior Analyst for a college and I'd been hearing about year 99 issues from January to about the end of March. From March on though I've heard of no other problems. A major backup system we were using failed on 99 and was corrected in about 3 days. I major food distributor in our city had a major systems crash, they went cold turkey into a new system and are now functioning, at least from an outsiders point of few. I understand its still chaos inside. There were some minor problems with cash registers in our town, but for the most part we've seemed to have survived. Does anyone have any 99 year problem stories. My own estimation was that the old legacy software was likely to have more erratic 99 year problems then 00 problems. (Microchips aside). Any comments/stories anyone? Justthinkin

-- justthinkin com (y2kaok@justthink.com), May 28, 1999

Answers

it's the chips that worry me much more than code

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), May 28, 1999.

(1) We had a payroll system that had a problem with the rollover to 1999. Fixed eventually. Manual work-around was implemented.

(2) Several other systems are failing to properly process upcoming scheduled events because of the 00 year.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), May 28, 1999.

Zoobie:

Got plenty of chips. I'm worried about the dips.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), May 28, 1999.

Transactions that straddle 1-1-00 would be likely candidates for problems. As we approach that date, there will, for example, be more orders that are placed this year and shipped next year, or ordered and shipped this year, and invoiced for payment next year.

Files which are sorted partially by date will be more likely to encounter problems as the data in them are partially from this year and partially from next. Such collections of data will approach a peak as we approach 1-1-00 and then decline thereafter.

FIFO inventory systems will be at risk after 1-1-00. However, those, such as at Kraft Foods, which include expiration dates, will be/have been at risk at various intervals before 1-1-00 depending on the lengths of the expiration periods.

The candidate list goes on and on.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), May 28, 1999.

It's also the numbers; Gartner group's estimate of the rate that such problems will appear between now and 01/01/00 requires scientific notation.

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), May 29, 1999.