We knew this was coming. Just because one class of "embedded system" passed the "rollover" with little problem, now Y2K is no longer a problem. How many other "classes" of embedded systems are out there with a date problem? How many PCs, mainframes and mid-range systems? From Yahoo News dated Aug. 22 <:)=

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The scant reported fallout from the weekend resetting of a popular navigation tool's clock bodes well for meeting the Year 2000 computer challenge, government officials and industry experts said on Sunday.

The network of navigational satellites known as the Global Positioning Service, or GPS, sailed through a critical transition on Saturday as its clock was reset at zero, a long-scheduled event with the potential to disrupt a wide range of military, business and consumer uses.

The Air Force said the Defense Department-owned and -operated system, 27 satellites in orbit about 11,000 miles (17,700 kms) above the Earth, handled the rollback successfully.

``Military and civilian GPS users worldwide can continue to depend on accurate information from the GPS satellites,'' the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Space Command said in a statement.

Jack Gribben, spokesman for President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 conversion, noted that the Year 2000 problem, a coding glitch that threatens to boggle some computers, involved a somewhat similar ``date-specific'' hurdle.

``To the extent we see organizations meeting the GPS challenge, it bodes well for their ability to meet the Y2K challenge,'' he said.

Gribben cautioned that it would take several days to learn how the clock resetting had affected older-model GPS receivers that may not have been properly prepared.

The GPS rollover, the first of its kind, was necessary because of the way its synchronized clocks started counting time on Jan. 6, 1980 with week ``0000'' when the system went into operation.

At 8 p.m. EDT (on) Saturday (0000 GMT Sunday), the clock was reset to zero -- not unlike what happens when an odometer rolls over after hitting all nines.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it was unaware of any serious distress calls from boaters related to malfunctioning GPS receivers.

``It takes a while for those kinds of calls to work their way all the way here to headquarters,'' said Commander Jim McPherson, a Coast Guard spokesman in Washington. ``But if anything did happen, it doesn't appear to be anything major, or we would have heard something by now.''

He said fewer than 12 Coast Guard cutters, aircraft, boats, cars and other auxiliary vessels reported a glitch, however fleeting, when their GPS receivers failed to update automatically.

Fixing those short-lived glitches typically required nothing more than powering down a GPS receiver to get re-synchronized with the satellites, McPherson said.

He estimated that as many as ``several thousand'' Coast Guard units had checked their units overnight and found no problems.

In Japan, Pioneer Electronic Corp, one of several car navigation system makers, said it had received several hundred phone calls Sunday from customers whose devices failed because they balked at the clock resetting.

Major U.S. manufacturers, fresh from checks with their biggest customers such as ambulance fleet operators, said they were unaware of any significant problems.

John Lovell, Y2K project manager for Sunnyvale, California-based Trimble Navigation Ltd., said his company had accurately predicted the fallout on its products, including older models that stumbled because of a deliberate decision to use some as guinea pigs.

Some of the older models, made before 1995, were now showing the date of Jan. 7, 1980, as if this were Day 2 back in the original week 0. But they were otherwise showing the correct position and time, he said.

``I'm very pleased with how it went yesterday,'' said Lovell, whose company has sold about one million GPS systems worldwide. ``I'm feeling much more confident'' about the Y2K hurdle.

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999

Answers

Its OK,just means the price of prepapration articles will be lower, keep up with the good news.Bought my mill,crankradio at deep discounts last week.More discounts coming.SHHHH d'ont wake the sheepel. Thanks Kos and company keep up the good work.Hows the shelter going.

-- Drken (Drken@bubble.gone), August 23, 1999.

Notice this article does mention that the Coast Guard itself had a few glitches:

[snip]

The U.S. Coast Guard said it was unaware of any serious distress calls from boaters related to malfunctioning GPS receivers.

``It takes a while for those kinds of calls to work their way all the way here to headquarters,'' said Commander Jim McPherson, a Coast Guard spokesman in Washington. ``But if anything did happen, it doesn't appear to be anything major, or we would have heard something by now.''

He said fewer than 12 Coast Guard cutters, aircraft, boats, cars and other auxiliary vessels reported a glitch, however fleeting, when their GPS receivers failed to update automatically.

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), August 23, 1999.

I am relieved the GPS rollover has gone well. However, it would be prudent to wait two business days before declaring victory. For example, it was several days before the MCI frame relay problem came to light.

The announced closing of Hong Kong markets is unusual.

-- Tom Beckner (xouttbeckner@erols.com), August 23, 1999.

So, this was a rollback of a system that keeps time. There is only a couple sets of software that are dependent on this as most of the functions are done in hardware.

How many differend pieces of software and hardware are out there dependend on a correct date? I don't even want to start guessing.

It is great that the satelite rollover was without problems to the satelites after all, they where programmed to do so from the start.

I just wish that all computer systems would have been programmed to rolover at y2k then the whole problem would not exist.

-- justme (justme@justme.net), August 23, 1999.

Japan's Car-Navigation Systems Bitten by GPS Bug, Nikkei Says

Tokyo, Aug. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Pioneer Electronics Corp. and other makers of car-navigation systems were inundated with thousands of complaints after the worldwide Global Positioning System reset itself over the weekend, rendering many of the systems inoperative, the Nihon Keizai newspaper said, without citing sources. The problems were caused when the satellite-based GPS used up the allotted 1,024 weeks programmed into its system in 1980. About 95,000 car-navigation systems in Japan may have stopped operating because of the glitch, Kyodo News reported.

-- don't (forget@thisone.though), August 23, 1999.

You know, folks that can't drive a car without a navigational system might not ought to have a car......

If you consider "reports" of failures to be complete assessments of actual events, you are sadly mistaken. Do you think that vessels experiencing problems will be issuing press releases reading something like -

Hey, Look at US, We are Morons for Not Updating our GPS

Actually, it will probably be weeks before reports are officially filed, and by then, everyone will have been so snowed by the Oh, nothing really happened at all - just minor stuff" rhetoric that it won't matter about "reports" any more.
Mr. K

-- Mr.K (Mr.Kennedy@home.today), August 23, 1999.

What was suppose to fail failed. Was was not suppose to fail did not. GPS has no relation to y2k.

-- rambo (rambo@thewoods.com), August 23, 1999.

Look at you y2k wackos backing away from this now! Careful you don't trip and fall, you're backing up so fast. Not so long ago, this was supposed to bring down the grid, because the grid is absolutely reliant on GPS. One more date "problem" you were wrong about. Are you starting to notice a trend? Wrong about everything else, wrong about y2k.

-- cd (artful@dodger.com), August 23, 1999.

cd,

Sorry, you've got the wrong wacko. I posted this months ago:

Another Myth, We Need Computers to Synchronize the Grid

And I have been saying since I joined this forum in February that 1999 dates would cause little if any problem.

Nice try, but it ain't Y2K yet.

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999.

I've also posted the link to the Dick Mills article that says the grid is not dependant on GPS. See this thread from July 30th:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001A9s

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), August 23, 1999.