From http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/11/biztech/articles/11year.html

(For educational/research purposes only)

Another concern, which Koskinen said he was briefed about on Tuesday at an Office of Management and Budget meeting with computer specialists, is that some computer systems that do not appear to track the date may nonetheless have date-sensitive microchips in them. Those systems also have to be tested and plans must be made to handle breakdowns, Koskinen said.

-- argh (argh@nowhere.com), November 11, 1999

Answers

--yep, good ole fix on failure, manual overrides, dickie m's boil up the furniture! yep, lemme see now, some tech holding a flashlight in his teeth gonna winkle out some bad chip, then reach into his box of replacement chips that were made at the same time same batch as the chip he's replacing! and stick that badboy in there and let 'er rip!

izzat how that's supposed to werke?

or maybe he's gonna run out to the car and get his booster cables and "bypass" thousands of dollars of switches and controllers on that sodium 24ddt67 poisoinate chemical mixer that just went kerflooie? Oh ya, that's the ticket. swel-l-l-l... I am SO re-assured.......uhhh huh...yep......cool....glad they got a plan.......feel better already.........

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), November 11, 1999.

Ummm....Shakey?

Is there any more room in that bunker of yours?

I'll bring the MRE's, the water, and some ammo. Whaddya say?

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), November 11, 1999.

With just 26 Federal Days 'till the Roll, isn't Kosky cutting it a tad bit close??

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), November 11, 1999.

Is this true? This can't be true! This CANNOT BE TRUE!!!! Tell me this isn't true!

-- Becky (rmbolte@wvadventures.net), November 11, 1999.

Kosky just now found out about this? Huh? Duh? That was covered on Day 1 of GI. He's one smart tac he is.

But he seez "It all fixed now, go Party!"

-- Tell it to the code (dickhead@Y2K.czar), November 11, 1999.

Mark Frautschi is probably pulling his hair out.

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), November 11, 1999.

Isn't this what Bruce Beach has been saying? See http://www.webpal.org/Gas.htm He also said that the engineers of the oil company (Phillips I think) told him that 25 percent of the embedded systems in a refinery had problems. He said the interview was broadcast on a local TV station. I think it was in Oaklahoma, but am not sure about that.

-- Danny (dcox@ix.netcom.com), November 11, 1999.

Zog-- ROTFLMAO! I hope we can meet some day and sit by the camp fire and TALK! That was called for, thanks~!!

-- Michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), November 11, 1999.

I just thought that this should be posted now. It is from the largest grocery chain in my area.

Actually this is an article from the early spring. This business has been active in alerting others in the area about potential problems. The whole article is great, worth the read. But the snip here deals with date sensitive chips with no apparent date functions.

 Thrifty Foods Tackles Monumental Y2K Project

"Every piece of hardware, software, or embedded system,"
Thompson explains, "either underwent a test script or has a
vendor compliance statement." He's quick to warn, however,
against accepting vendor compliance statements at face value,
citing the stores' 60 hand scanners as an example. These
handheld devices are used for ordering products and
maintaining inventory. As such, they're an absolutely essential
part of Thrifty's operation.

These devices appeared to have no date functionality at all and
Thompson had a vendor compliance statement on file. As an
added precaution, he decided to test one of them. Much to his
surprise, the BIOS failed. No-one realized that these devices
had internal clocks. Had they missed this, these innocuous little
appliances could have seriously impaired Thrifty's ability to
function smoothly on January 1, 2000.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), November 11, 1999.