|
OK this
is a way to check if your system is ready for next Year!
Just follow these
easy steps:
- Make
several backups of your applications and data, or consider
using a surplus machine that can be experimented on safely.
- Set
the date and time to December 31, 1999, 11:59 PM. Turn
the computer off, wait a few minutes, and turn it back
on.
Does your computer now report 2000? Great you passed this
section it's time to proceed with the arbitrary date test.
If your computer now has the date 1900 or 1980 well then
you have some work to do. Sorry you failed and need to
do some work to get ready.
- Set
your computer's date to January 2, 2000 (or any other
date after 1999). Now turn the computer off, wait, and
turn it back on.
Thought some systems will read the year 2000 OK they may
have trouble dealing with a user-input date of 2000 or
greater. If this causes a problem, it is most likely in
the real time clock (RTC). When your computer rolls over
from 1999 to 2000, the OS and applications correctly arrive
at 2000, even though the RTC only holds a two-digit year
field. If this is the case, this test should expose the
problem.
- Now
test all of your programs, including rarely run, homegrown
applications.
You might come across some files that have there own
own interpretation of 2000. Complicating this issue is
the occurrence of data abuse, where the year 99 or 00
referred to an unknown or undefined year. The year 2000
is a leap year (unlike 1900 and 2100), which throws another
monkey wrench in some date algorithms. Be sure to check
that your programs will accept February 29, 2000 as a
legal date.
Most
Windows 95 applications, as well as Windows 95 itself, appears
year 2000 compliant. UNIX (Mac) keeps track of time in number
of seconds elapsed since 1970, and this unique method has
saves UNIX's bacon (at least until the year 2038, when the
date function must be expanded beyond 32 bits). DOS applications
will have the most problems, so be sure to put your favorites
through the tests mentioned above.
|
