"The truly scary thing about the Millennium Bug is its unpredictability", says Ian Partington MD of Computer Experts, who explains the problems of PC compliance. Leave us all alone. All we really want is to survive the millennium roll over with as little inconvenience as possible. And I get very frustrated at all the hype, rubbish, doom and gloom, complacency, ill informed, opinion, self styled experts, the list is endless. The truth? It probably won't be a total catastrophe, and it probably will affect more people than we expect. The main problem is its unpredictability. THE COMPLEXITY OF SYSTEMS The reason is simple. It's the complexity of the systems. Anyone who has used a PC for more than a week will have probably experienced a "crash". This is when the whole PC and software "hangs" and usually you have no choice but to reboot and start again. What caused it to crash? Unless it becomes a persistent you'll never know. It was just one of those things and it will probably never happen again in the say way (In computer science terms we call it a "combinatorial explosion".) What has combinatorial explosion got to do with the Millennium Bug? Firstly, it means that we should do out best to eliminate possible problems before the event. Unlike the software crashes I described above, the Millennium Bug is going to hit millions of computers at a very exact time. Secondly, it means that we should make no assumptions, everything should be tested thoroughly. In software engineering, we expect to spend about 50 per cent of the time designing code, and about 50 per cent of the time testing it to see if it worked in the way we predicted. It is due to the complexity that you cannot assume that a system will work in the way you expect. You need to test it. So are there seven levels of compliance? It really doesn't matter. I'll describe some obvious ones, but let's not bother counting them, you'll be turning into a bore! HARDWARE COMPLIANCE This is now the best understood, but still surrounded by controversy. It's easy to describe. When IBM introduced the "AT" (Advanced Technology) PC in about 1980, they inserted a chip called the Real Time Clock (RTC) chip. It's purpose was simple, powered by a small battery, it had to keep time when the PC was switched off. It was designed to increment the year by one every new year, but the "centurybyte", (currently 19) does not increment to 00, the 19 stays the same.) This is almost certainly happening on your PC right now. (Try our free Millennium Bug Viewer off this web site to check). It is compensated in modern PCs by BIOS inference" When the RTC says it is 1900, the BIOS changes it to 2000. Is that good enough? Here's the controversy. Major manufacturers claim it is. But remember the combinatorial explosion? Why are we taking risks assuming that it will be OK. Why aren't we using totally complaint RTC's instead? (My White Paper on this web site has more information about this aspect.) SOFTWARE COMPLIANCE This includes operating systems and all other software. Operating systems are almost entirely beyond a PC user's control. And let's face it, it is mostly Microsoft. So visit the Microsoft web site (www.microsoft.com) and get the latest information regarding millennium compliance of their products. But take note, the reports change. It is not safe to assume that all the statements are definitive and rigid. You'll need to keep checking occasionally. For other software, again, if it is a common application, you will have little control over its compliance. Again, check the manufacturer's statements. Can we take the manufacturers at their word? Who knows, but what other choice is there? Some experts recommend that you write to the manufacturer for definitive statements, to hold them liable if they mislead you, but Bill Gates hasn't responded to any of my letters so far! But don't forget to test. First, get the hardware sorted. Probably the best remedy now is a commercial TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program which constantly checks for the roll over then corrects the TRC. Only once you have got the hardware sorted should you go on to test software, otherwise the tests you do will not be valid. DATA COMPLIANCE The general advice is to change two digit years (3/4/99) to four digit (3/4/1999). If you have any formulas applied to spreadsheets or databases to manipulate data, check them to see that they do not make any assumptions about years. The easiest demonstration of this is my doctor's secretary. When I tell her my date of birth (19/9/55), she works out the century for herself. But computers need a formula to do this (called a windowing algorithm) which says that if I say my year of birth is 55, then I mean 1955 not 2055 or 1855. If you have formulas manipulating dates, they need to be consistent to handle this type of assumption. SUMMARY To sum up, I think the best advice is to make no assumptions, use reputable firms to help you with your compliance (there are lot of cowboys out there), and to test, test and test again.   BACK TO NEWS