Re: Y2K

Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com)
Fri, 19 Jun 1998 13:08:30 -0400 (EDT)

On 19 Jun 1998, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
[SNIPPED]
>
> What about the CMOS chips that wrap around to 01-01-1980 at 01-01-2000?
> Shouldn't we make the check look like:
>
> year += 1900;
> /* Fix for CMOS chips without century bit */
> if (year < 1970)
> year += 100;
> /* Fix for CMOS chips that wrap around to 01-01-80 */
> if (year < 1995)
> year += 20;
>
> ... which will save us from 2000 .. 2015
>

But they don't. the 1/1/80 stuff is DOS. The timer chips keep the
BCD century, i.e. '19' in the century BYTE (not bit). Failure to
warp at the Y2K would make the time 1-1-1900. This is fixed in
the kernel so you have 99 years to reset the CMOS clock from the
BIOS or by using 'clock -w'.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
***** FILE SYSTEM MODIFIED *****
Penguin : Linux version 2.1.105 on an i586 machine (66.15 BogoMips).
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