OT: patenting an old year/date concept, to make millions - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

14 Nov 1999

...
   In addition, some of the code in RT-11 in the monitor
and elsewhere
rejects a date value with a year value of zero - meaning that 1972 is
considered invalid by that code.  This was fixed in RT-11 5.7, it now consistently
handles 1972 through
 2099, inclusive. I am confused here just a little bit.  And I am not taking
exception to
what was done in V5.7 - in fact, I believe that the decisions which were
made were correct.  However, if  "this was fixed in RT-11 V5.7" is
what I think the word "fixed" means, then not allowing the command:
"DATE  01-Jan-72"
in all versions of RT-11 which did allow the command "DATE  01-Jan-73"
means that these previous versions had a "bug".  If a "bug" is the
correct
interpretation for not allowing a year of 1972, I wonder why the developers
of RT-11 never corrected that aspect in all the years of RT-11 development? 
It wasn't a very serious bug, unless you had files with datestamps
...
 from 1972 on them.  In my experience, you're only
likely to see pre-1974 datestamps in RT-11 if the files were imported from, say, an
old DOS-11
tape.

...
 > >the DATE/TIME hardware clock on the third
party board.  Any idea
> >how the 11/93 does the 1999 transition with the now Y2K compliant
> >firmware update?
> Look in the NL.MAC source code - the SETUP.SAV window range was
> chosen identically: 
...
 I stated my question incorrectly.  I know how the DATE
value is divided
in the different 4 fields.  What I was specifically wondering about was how
DATE/TIME values in the 11/93 were handled before the firmware on the
11/93 was made Y2K compliant as what happens now - if indeed anything
is different?  I have seen references to the upgrade needed by the 11/93
firmware to make it Y2K compliant.  What I am curious about is how the
Y2K compliant firmware for the 11/93 handles the year and if that was
any different before the 11/93 firmware was made Y2K compliant. 
Technically, the "11/93 TOY clock firmware fix" wasn't to fix a Y2K
problem, it was there to fix a Y2000.164 problem.  The actual problem
occured after 29-Feb-2000, which the TOY clock firmware regarded (at
boot time) as an illegal date and it set the TOY clock back to the
factory default date (1-Jan-1980, if I'm not mistaken.)

This was more of a boneheaded "2000 is not a leap year" mistake than
anything else.

Most (all?) other PDP-11 TOY clock modules don't attempt to do anything
particularly "smart" (here, simple is good, because the "smart" code
may do something "stupid" someday) with the date.

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
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