[Coco] Y2K fixes ever developed or posted?

[jdaggett at gate.net]

On 13 Dec 2003 at 21:45, Alex wrote:

> On Dec 13, 2003, at 7:01 PM, Dave Kelly wrote:
> 
> > Microware did not fix the Y2K problem in OS9 until version 3.1 or
> > 3.2.
> 
> In reality, the OS itself doesn't have a problem with y2k, though most
> utilities which use the date do.  OS9 uses a single byte for the year
> with the epoch being 1900, the year 2003 being represented by the
> value 103 or 0x67.  Unfortunately the date command only accepts two
> digit decimal dates.  Some commands will end up printing the year as
> 103, some as 67, and some as 19103.  On top of that the support for
> many clock chips do have y2k problems.
>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Many of the clock chips designed in the 80's did not have a century byte. So in 
implemting a RTC in software that was never done either. Many of the RTC chips 
store the year as a packed BCD byte. The century byte is hard coded. That 
essentially made them Y2K noncompliant. Newer RTC chips have the century byte. 

A correction to the OS soft clock would be to setup a global variable for the century 
byte in packed BCD format along with the year byte. That way the century byte is 
not hardcoded in the software. Or just use one of the newer RTC chips. 

james
 
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