is there a means to write a program that could tell main system computers that the year 2000 is now,but have the systems that they control in a down mode, so they can mirrow what will happen on the real date,and this could also help find where the embedded codes really are

-- James gale (egale@mail.pris.bc.ca), November 08, 1998

Answers

Absolutely, though not easily. This technique is what is called time- machine testing. An independent computer is set up to believe it is some future date (many dates are used for testing, not just 1/1/00), and the data are 'aged' to use suitable future dates as well.

Experience with these systems has shown that it takes about 6 months to set them up correctly and age the data. It is *not* a trivial process. The operating system won't work in 2000, so it must be upgraded from what is being used now, say. And the upgraded OS will no longer run the code generated with the current compiler versions or language environment, so these must be upgraded. But the old source won't compile with the new compiler, so it all needs to be modified in ways that have nothing to do with the date. Packaged (third party) applications refuse to run because they believe the software license has expired, so this must be dealt with. Or anti- virus programs think a virus has changed the date and block things. And many many other problems, so it takes time.

Nor is a time machine a complete test, especially since most computer systems communicate with other systems constantly. Since those other systems are not in your jurisdiction (nor are the phone systems and other communication lines),you must exclude several essential parts of true end-to-end testing.

Nor is this always possible with embedded systems, where you often have no access to either the clock chip or the firmware looking at it.

Nor is there enough spare computer capacity in the world for everyone to duplicate their systems with different hardware to even try to create a time machine.

But all in all, time machine testing is the best we can do short of waiting for the actual future to arrive. It is being done here and there, and it does find problems that otherwise would have been missed.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 08, 1998.