This question has been bothering me. I recall reading or hearing that DOS sytems would not function after the rollover.

Can anyone with a technical background provide more complete information?

I've seen too many of these still in use (doctor's office, sherrif's office, state and county offices) to make me comfortable if there is a problem.

-- Jon Williamson (jwilliamson003@sprintmail.com), August 06, 1999

Answers

Well, the DOS function to return the current date is INT 21h function 2Ah, which does return a 4 digit binary year in the CX register. So, a DOS program does have the ability to be compliant. More than that, I can not say... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 06, 1999.

Jon,

DOS programs can be Y2K compliant. Also, many programs may have no date dependecies.

A few months ago, I set the date on my PC well beyond 2000 and ran that way for a few weeks. I did not encounter any serious problems, but then, I don't do any date related processing on my PC other than file creation/modification dates.

Jerry

P.S. Some (older) PC BIOS may have rollover problems.

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), August 06, 1999.

Whether or not your DOS returns a 4-digit year correctly, and knows what a leap year is, a DOS program MAY work just fine after 1/1/2000.

It might have no date dependencies, or it might have code that figures out the correct century by using a window, just like other mainframe and PC programs.

You have three PC problems to worry about. (1) is the DOS and platform (BIOS, RTC) compliant, (2) are the application programs (Word, Quicken, whatever) compliant, and (3) does the data (e.g., an Access database) use compliant formats. You might be ok without (1), depending on how (2) works. But if (2) or (3) are bad, you are in deep PC trouble.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), August 06, 1999.

Thanks, all.

Personally, all of the computers I interact with are using W95/98. I know that our company had a DOS program for payroll that had to be replaced because it could not be made compliant (or the vendor would no longer support it??).

-- Jon Williamson (jwilliamson003@sprintmail.com), August 06, 1999.

I know of a couple of DOS based accounts packages that are supposedly Y2K compliant. Most vendors though port/redesign their apps for Windoze.

-- Rob Somerville (merville@globalnet.co.uk), August 06, 1999.

Clipper programs can be compliant IF the date masks are set to 4 digit years. Unfortunately, many are set to 2-digit years and depend on date "windowing" to determine the epoch.

-- vbProg (vbProg@MicrosoftAndAccessSuck.com), August 06, 1999.