My 92 model 486 has date of jan 4th, 1980. tried 1 1 72, gave invalid WOULD take 1 1 83, but 83 has no leap. suggestions??

-- G. T. Zelfer (jerryz@ourtownusa.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

Yeah, next time dont go with fix-on-failure.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), January 01, 2000.

Hanster, Good one!

-- Leonard Chmielecki (Chmielecki@worldnet.att.net), January 01, 2000.

And every time you reboot it, no matter what you have changed the date to, it will revert back to Jan 4, 1980. I rolled over about a dozen of our 486 PC's at work, and the same thing happened on all of them. Do you use it for any date sensitive calculations? If not, don't worry about. Or, you could get it fixed still - check at the manufacturers web site to see if it is correctable with a flash ROM update.

-- Bob (bob@bob.bob), January 01, 2000.

I should elaborate a bit. I work with peoples personal and business computers each and every day of the week for years. In the last 6 months I have been telling people to check their computers for both hardware and software compliancy. I cant believe how many have left it for the last minute or not done it at all.

Friday I was talking to a lady who does some kind of business consulting. She told me that 3 of her programs were from 1995 and wanted to know if they were compliant. I asked her if she checked with the company that made the programs, she didnt, she was hoping that SOMEHOW I would know. After telling her it doesnt work that way I told her that its likely the programs have some kind of date related issue to be concerned with, she said she would get around to it after New Years. I told her she would need those programs on Monday, plus she needs to check her bios/rtc and operating system. That overwhelmed her and shut her brain off. The gods of "Fix On Failure" have just got another believer.

THAT is my biggest concern for y2k, and I have made that known here many times.

Its not the utilities or big infrastructure to be afraid of, its the SME's.

We shall see...

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), January 01, 2000.

I recommend free Y2k biosfix by Norton.

http://www.discountlegal.com/nbfixall.exe

If you have some machine that needs to be booted from a floppy disk copy biosfix.sys to floppy and add line to config.sys: devicehigh=biosfix.sys

-- Ari Sillanpdd (arisillanpaa@nic.fi), January 01, 2000.

Hamster,

I am amazed at the number of people I've talked to that upgraded their computers to "fix that Y2K problem" but never checked their application software.

"We all know that 1990 DB program so well, I'd hate to have to retrain everyone on a newer version."

And I know one small buisness that is changing over to a completely new system (hardware and software)this weekend! Good luck on that one!

I think Monday is going to be very interesting.

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), January 01, 2000.

I haven't touched my 486 which is used for one report used dBase3 and another small report using a word processing program. I turn it on twice a month to do those two reports and don't use it for anything else, not even games (I use my P133 for internet use, games and answering machine).

I haven't done anything with it because I want to experience FIRSTHAND whatever Y2K problems that pass my way. So far Y2K has been a complete dud. If my 486 gives me a bunch of hassle then I know that same scenario is being replayed across the nation and world a million times over. When I owned a mailing and shipping store it was dependent upon a 386 which is now stored in the closet because I can't bear to throw away a perfectly good computer. I want to experience firsthand the difficulties on a non critical computer, so that I will have something to draw on from the Y2K studying I've been doing for the last 4 - 5 months. So far, I haven't seen any Y2K impact whatsoever. Not even packed stores or lines at the gas station. Not so much as one messed up bill or statement.

Maybe (I haven't thrown in the towel yet) small businessmen will be the only group affected by Y2K - I said MAYBE - I know its too early to tell yet, but I damn sure expected SOMETHING to happen in all those developing nations like Indonesia, Thailand, etc, etc. Nada, Zilch, Nyet - Everybodys happy and gay and the stock market will probably shoot up another 1000 points on the next trading day AND I'M NOT PROFITING BY IT. I want to feel some Y2k pain. It'll be penance for my stupidity.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), January 01, 2000.