A major fluff piece with few facts from this mornings Fort Worth Star Telegram http://www.star-telegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:FRONT77/1:FRONT77041199.html

Excerpts from the article:

D/FW AIRPORT -- A new radar computer system at the regional air traffic control center near Dallas/Fort Worth Airport came online two weeks ago and is working flawlessly, tracking thousands of aircraft in flight over North Texas and parts of four other states, Federal Aviation Administration officials say.

Unlike its predecessors, the system is also "Year 2000 compliant," said Doug Murphy, air traffic manager for the FAA's Southwest Region, which is based in Fort Worth.

The FAA has installed the new computer system in 13 of its 20 en route air traffic control centers nationwide and plans to have systems at other centers operational by October, said David Medina, manager of the FAA's air traffic requirements branch in Fort Worth.

"We haven't seen any problems with it, but we're still running under the old software, so we don't have a completely new system yet," said David Benedetto, a controller who also is legislative liaison for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association local at the Fort Worth center. "As far as we can see, the hardware is working fine."

The computer system "is working perfectly," the FAA's Murphy said.

The new system, based on IBM G-3 computers from the early 1990s, cost about $450 million for all 20 centers and is part of a $2 billion nationwide radar upgrade for all of the FAA's air traffic control facilities, officials said.

"The display system replacements have been installed, and we are training on them," he said. The center plans to switch to the new screens this month, he said. The new displays aren't state of the art, Benedetto said. "They're more like 1980s technology," he said.

The host computer systems are designed to work for 25 years, the FAA said.

-- B (bendere@donedat.com), April 11, 1999

Answers

"We haven't seen any problems with it, but we're still running under the old software, so we don't have a completely new system yet," said David Benedetto, a controller who also is legislative liaison for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association...."

This is good news/bad news. If its true that they have installed 13 of 20 sites with the new mainframe thats great news - an positively warp speed for the FAA. However, the "old software" part is the catch. Sounds like they are running the unremediatated software. I wish they would be upfront about exactly what is installed and running where versus the BS terms of remediated/validated etc. I suspect we are going to get to Rollover still not knowing much more than we do now.

-- RD. ->H (drherr@erols.com), April 11, 1999.

So this story is saying that they have replaced the 20 year old 3083 mainframe with a seven year old G3 mainframe. Big deal. A brand new G5 will run 35 year old System/360 operating systems and applications with no change. Just like a Pentium still runs the old 8086 code. This still doesn't make the software compliant, as noted in the article. Yes, this is a step, but the clock continues to tick. The DOT Inspector General has some concerns about the FAA's implementation problems, that I posted in this thread... <:)=

FAA successfully completes Y2K test

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 11, 1999.