Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 11:25:00 -0400 (EDT) From: bush doctor <dervish@ikhala.tcimet.net> To: andy@tridentgroup.co.uk (Andrew Aitchison) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Millennium compliance Message-ID: <199806191525.LAA01379@ikhala.tcimet.net> In-Reply-To: <41AF9163AA46D0118D7F004095245CC707DE4F@NTSERVER2> from Andrew Aitchison at "Jun 19, 98 01:46:39 pm"
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see http://www.freebsd.org/y2kbug.html -- bush doctor Once upon a time <Andrew Aitchison> said: > Hi > > I have a couple of questions regarding Millennium compliance: > > Firstly, does FreeBSD interrogate the RTC chip directly for the > time/date information or the system BIOS instead? This is important > because virtually all machines currently shipped, even those with > Millennium compliance statements or stickers still fail one important > aspect of the date change. This aspect is the live rollover. > > I have tested many systems, including virtually every large > manufacturer's PC and they all fail to change the century byte on the > RTC chip until the machine is power cycled. In most cases the BIOS > infers 00 as 2000 and so reports correct rollover, however the century > byte still does not get updated until a power cycle has happened. > > Some manufacturers get over this by supplying a TSR fix that intercepts > RTC calls and supplies the correct date however these fixes will not > work with operating systems such as FreeBSD, Windows NT and so on, they > only work with Windows 95, 98, 3.11 and DOS. > > Although we are not related to Computer Experts, their site > www.computerexperts.co.uk has the tester freely downloadable and this > will demonstrate the problem even with so called millennium compliant > computers. > > The second question I have is what will happen to FreeBSD if the > computer BIOS is not millennium compliant when the century changes? > > Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you can help. I have > spent quite some time trying to understand the whole millennium > compliance issue and as we run a non-stop Internet service it is of > quite some concern to me. > > Andy Aitchison. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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