I'm reading conflicting info about how Y2K will affect the computer chips running electronic ignition. Several months ago the car companies said they had no idea whether the chips had hidden date capabilities, and would therefore crash, because the chips were bought as "off the shelf" and could have had any number of hidden or unused features. Now the Y2K newspaper articles list vehicles in the group that has no problem, like TV's. Anyone know about this? (P.S. My email has an anti-junk thing to stop the auto spam bots that cruise sites harvesting e-addresses.) -Bob

-- Bob E (drmicroREMOVETHIS@globalserve.net), February 08, 1999

Answers

Bob,

Here's a quote from an August 21, 1998 article in Newsbytes...

"Year 2000 - Is The Party Over?"

http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/116875.html

[begin snip]

A recent report discussed how the engineers testing the AMC Eagle found that the main processing unit, which controlled the car's ignition, power steering, fuel injection and drive train, failed during Y2K testing. The processing unit did not fail due to date calculations but because the advent of 2000 caused a data buffer to overflow, thereby making the embedded processor fail.

[end snip]

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 08, 1999.

This report was later withdrawn when people challenged it. A one page site offering a reward for proof is http://www.ooi.com/~sburkett/y2k.html.

Notice that rule 17 says entries must be received by 21 December 1999. I guess they aren't honestly certain either.

-- Tod (muhgi@yahoo.com), February 09, 1999.