Lots of elec. links, most of them familiar.

Will the lights all go out at midnight on December 31, 1999?

The short answer is: "No, they probably won't."

Read on....

-- lisa (lisa@abuddy's.house), November 07, 1999

Answers

Read on....

Would if I could!

-- (can't@read.nothing), November 07, 1999.

Here is the URL referred to by Justin Case on another thread:

LINK

Still, I would like to know what Lisa was going to say about it...

Lisa?.....

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), November 07, 1999.

Well, I thought it might be interesting, but the incorrect information on PLCs and Y2K stopped me pretty quick. I followed the links, and some of the supporting documentation leads right to Beach of "Beach bug" fame, sigh...so much for facts.

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.cm), November 07, 1999.

I want to make this clear ...PLC's have been the LEAST of the problems in Y2K for the electric power industry, they typically don't use an RTC, and if they do, they typcially use it for date stamping of data only.

I know of NO standard PLCs that fail to function in Y2K - including Allen-Bradley, Modicon, Reliance, GE-Fanuc, Siemens, all of these PLCs. There are some problems with leap years for some models having RTCs, but these problems have been there for past leap years, in the case of Allen-Bradley. Y2K bugs related to the use of PLCs has been NOT the PLCs, but the interfaces TO the PLCs(many, perhaps even most, PLCs run stand-alone, and don't even have an interface). Operator interfaces are typically computer systems with hardware/RTC/operating system and application software.

Regards,

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), November 07, 1999.

Following the links from the referenced URL, there are a few items of interest. First, there is a link to a site for Borderlands Scientific Research Foundation. Borderlands< /a>

Borderlands has issued this familiar-sounding challenge:
"Now, the "Y2k Challenge". There have been numerous reports and stories about how this or that system "locked up" or failed to work when the 01-01-2000 date was entered. Stories of everything from VCRs to new automobiles to entire manufacturing plants ceasing to function because of a Y2k related bug in their hardcoded embedded systems abound with no substantiation for the claims whatsoever. Most of the worries about embedded systems center on the power industry and whether they will be able to operate after 01-01-2000.

So, when I was a guest on the Art Bell show on 01-06-1999, I stated that I would be welcome to ANY offering of a specific example of embedded system failure. What I mean by this is that I want to see an example of a device COMPLETELY malfunctioning because it is date sensitive  in other words  the device must CEASE TO FUNCTION period, and we at BSRF must be able to verify it for ourselves."

Sure sounds like Andy Ray. Remember, too, that Andy Ray once posted that his company had issued this challenge.

Borderlands has a link to this interesting site: Infowar.com, which also has some interesting links. Here's one I found particularly interesting: c4i e-mail group, which is described as follows:

X-Disclaimer: C4I-Pro is an unofficial list run in a DoD school environment in the interest of an academic exchange of information and ideas as a means for advancement of C4I related issues. Views expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Naval Postgraduate School, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense. POC: c4i-pro-owner@stl.nps.navy.mil. X-Information: For information on C4I-Pro (such as how to post messages and unsubscribe) send "info c4i-pro" in the body of a message to: majordomo@stl.nps.navy.mil.

The Infowar site has archived the e-mails from this group...interesting.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), November 07, 1999.

FactFinder,

With regard to your claim to "know of NO standard PLCs that fail to function in Y2K -- including Allen-Bradley, etc.": one of the first links I followed from the related PLC page at the referenced site took me to no less an authority than Rick Cowles, who asserts: "However, there's another 8 or 10 percent of A-B [Allen-Bradley] PLC's and support equipment that aren't compliant or that require a workaround. Now, this small percentage may not seem to be a lot to worry about, but let's put that percentage in a perspective of magnitude. Over the years, millions of A-B controls have been sold in the industrial world. 8 or 10 percent of a million is still a very large number." Cowles goes on to cite a lot of other manufacturers in addition to Allen-Bradley whose PLCs are documented as not Y2K compliant. So let's get this straight--are you saying that the only Y2K issue with *all* of the Cowles-cited PLCs is that they will experience "leap-year problems"? Seems to this reporter that you are claiming an awful lot for just one type of fault. Do you have some facts I could follow up on? (At least the "Electricity" site lets us see what references the discussion is based on, which is a refreshing change.)

Also, you appear to be one of those Web people who cannot stand anything written by Bruce Beach, which is an emotional reaction. The "Electricity" site cites Beach's "Gas" report for a statistic that somewhere between 3 to 9 percent of embedded systems in the *gas* industry were *in fact* observed to fail on testing. Am I just obtuse, or was Beach citing an actual observation by those doing the testing in the industry? Has anyone, anywhere, proved his citation to that source wrong? (I know that there are all kinds of arguments about his theory of "secondary clocks", but I'm talking about a cited fact.)

And while I'm at it, did you see the post by RC in the DD Oil thread to the Hughes Baker, Inc. URL citing all kinds of PLCs used in the oil industry that are admitted *by the manufacturer* to be non-Y2K compliant?

For a fact finder, you seem a bit short of the mark. But as a simple fact checker, I'm open to correction. Just show me the facts.

-- A Reporter (FactChecker@thatsright.com), November 07, 1999.

Factfinder -

You can find several examples of non-compliant PLC's here.

GE Industrial Systems

-- John Ainsworth (ainsje00@wfu.edu), November 08, 1999.

Justin Case?

C'mon Lisa, you can't be serious. You fell for this?

-- Justin Time (justintime@this.scam), November 08, 1999.