set back clock to fool computer

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Hi all:

Someone had mentioned in another forum to set back the clock in a computer system .I think the writer was referring to a power plant and the answer in part was that some of the clocks couldn't be reset backwards.Does anyone have knowledge of this type of solution??

-- Marc Cloutier (maarc@worldnet.att.net), January 05, 1998

Answers

This is a viable solution for some applications where some outside system won't conflict with the internal time. However, sometimes just setting the clock to another time can cause real interesting things to happen depending on what the system was using the clock to track.

I personally manage a medical lab and we have numerous pieces of equiptment that will cease to function properly at the century rollover. However, the date is not used between our Lab computer or LAN (local area network)and the equiptment. We have discovered that many of the systems can be lied to about the date without bad effect. Others however have real interesting things happen related to last maintainence and to the proper outdate on reagents and will have to have a hardware update.

-- Paul Cordes (pcordes@igateway.net), January 05, 1998.


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