Operating systems of the 1970s handling dates beyond the year 2000

Mike Alexander mta at umich.edu
Mon Jan 19 01:07:59 CST 2015


--On January 18, 2015 at 8:04:09 PM -0500 Mark Longridge 
<cubexyz at gmail.com> wrote:

> So, did any operating system programmers from this time period have
> the foresight to use 4 digits for the year? I just checked APL/360 and
> it seems that it does not.

MTS will work ok until the original IBM TOD clock overflows in 2042.  I 
think there were a few minor bugs that had to be fixed in 2000, but 
most everything worked.  I run MTS every now and then and haven't 
noticed problems.  Fixing it for 2042 will be a bigger problem if 
anyone who cares is still around.  Since STCK is a non-privileged 
instruction finding and fixing the problems will be challenging.

             Mike
 


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