If there are undiscovered Y2K sensitivities in the chips used in the electrical grid systems that can not be overcome by manual methods it could take 6 + months to replace them and restore power.

My microprocessor engineer friends that work for chip companies told me that it takes, on the average 6 months, to create a custom chip and deliver it to the customer in significant quantities. The necessary steps include * design the needed micro-code * pre-production fabrication testing * reworking * testing * developing the new QA procedures * pre-production documentation for manufacturing and testing * final debugging * release to manufacturing * programming the test equipment * First production run and testing * Make modifications as necessary * Deliver units to customer.

The 6 month estimate assumed that all was normal at the engineering & manufacturing facilty : electrical power, communications, all employees on site, all vendors providing necessary support and transport.

But if there is no power or communications at the the engineering facility - then what happens to that normal 6 month schedule ? It is the 17th century again baby !

Recall that last December there was a 10+ hour power outage for the entire San Francisco Bay area. It was NOT Y2K related. It was a simple human error. Somebody forgot to remove some shorting bars when power was reapplied after some scheduled changes. The shorting bars caused significant damage to 6 huge transformers which had to be replaced. Fortunately emergency replacements were located and power was restored after 10 hours.

Manual override procedures were useless. The Bay area was power dead.

Here is the point : It took that power company 10+ hours to restore the power when it was caused by 1 original problem. They knew what the problem was and where it was. But it still took 10 + hours to fix !

Suppose they have a 1000 + near-simultaneous and avalanching problems at unknown locations. And the replacement parts are a MINIMUM of 6 months away. Then what ?

-- Ron Sander (judy_sander@hotmail.com), June 18, 1999.

-- Ron Sander (judy_sander@hotmail.com), June 18, 1999

Answers

Good points Ron. Our only hope for survival is Y2K SUPPLY. Anything less is a date with disaster.

-- Jammy (wesleyan@dog.com), June 18, 1999.

Oops!

-- Jammy (wesleyan@dog.com), June 18, 1999.

And something else to consider: HOW MANY power companies would be IN THE QUEUE for those "new" chips? How long would the wait be, the further down the list they are...?

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), June 18, 1999.

help-me experts. seems like;the golden-rule[he that has gold-rules] if y2k; is over .07 seems like like ''he who is best prepared will rule' am i close???

-- al-d. (catt@zianet.com), June 18, 1999.

Pay no attention to the fact that electric utilities don't use custom designed chips. Just continue ranting.

-- cd (artful@dodger.com), June 18, 1999.

CD,

The power companies may not use custom chips themselves, they buy off- the-shelf power industry hardware already containing chips. But the manufacturers of those off-the-shelf devices are very likely to be using an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) or PAL (Programmable Array Logic) device. And the PROMS installed in that off-the-shelf hardware will certainly contain vendor-created firmware.

Yes the power companies don't buy custom chips directly, they don't build their own circuit boards. But they certainly do use a lot of equipment that contains some form of custom device, be it an ASIC, PAL or pre-programmed PROM application.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), June 18, 1999.

WW:

You're right but too narrowly focused. Yes, there are custom ASICs, FPGAs and PALs on those boards, and they may need to be modified. But the 6 month description was for ground-up creation of a custom chip, not for making what mostly likely is a small patch to an existing design. Like IT software, the time required to remediate is not well described by measuring the time required to create a new system from scratch.

You also forgot to mention that almost no such patching has proven to be required anywhere in the process of generating and distributing power. Nice to have, certainly, but not required.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), June 18, 1999.