TOURBUS - 23 June 1998 - Best of Tourbus: Y2K gives good advice and URL's to help us check our current puters :)

Archives on the Web at http://www.TOURBUS.com

Tells how to check your 'puter EASILY !!!

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The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 1998 by Richard W. Eastman and Ancestry, Inc. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.

Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
Vol. 3 No. 26 - June 27, 1998


- Is Your Computer Millennium Ready?

Have you read all the stories about computers being ready (or not ready) for the year 2000? Some of these stories are sensationalized, but the underlying problem is real: many computers will not operate properly on January 1, 2000. How about your computer? Will it function 18 months from now?

The Millennium Bug may lurk in any of three locations on a personal computer: in software applications, in the operating system or in the BIOS, the basic instruction set that governs the computer's operation.

Once turned on, a PC relies on its BIOS (basic input/output system) to check the data stored in the system's real-time clock (RTC). The operating system then grabs the date and time from the RTC, and applications draw date information from the operating system.

In the next eighteen months I hope to test all the leading genealogy programs for Year 2000 compliance and will be writing about my findings. Other applications should be checked with the program's manufacturer, and there is a good chance such information can be found on the World Wide Web.

Luckily, diagnosing hardware and operating system susceptibility proves a bit more straightforward. Anyone using a PC clone might face problems if the system relies on a Pentium processor or an older chip. Some Pentiums, 486s and their predecessors are not century date compliant. Machines with more recent Pentium chips or Pentium II processors should have no hardware problems.

A tiny diagnostic software utility may be downloaded free of charge from the Web site of the National Software Testing Laboratories. Once extracted, this program is only 13,552 bytes. The free YMARK2000 program can be downloaded from http://www.nstl.com/html/ymark_2000.html. The program temporarily sets the computer's internal clock to read 10 seconds before the millennium and then monitors its ability to roll over to 2000.

YMARK2000 only checks your computer's hardware and BIOS, not its operating system or any application programs. If you run Microsoft Windows, you may or may not have a problem. Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 should have no century date problems. Windows 3.1 and older revisions of Windows 95 may need to be upgraded in order to avoid problems. Microsoft maintains a Web site with information on the millennium readiness of all of its products at: http://www.microsoft.com/year2000.

Apple Macintosh computers have always been ready for the year 2000. Mac owners can feel smug that once again their systems proved to be superior. Even the original Macs introduced in 1984 are fully Year 2000 compliant.

Actually, all Macs will have trouble in the year 29,940. I don't think any of us need to be too concerned about that. ==========================================================

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