Re: Y2K Fears to Stop Cityrail Trains

["Michael McDonald" <michael.and.colleen.mcdonald@xtra.co.nz>]

Don't forget that Sydney and Melbourne will have at least 2 hours warning,
Brisbane 3, and Perth 5, of any impending problems.  I can guarantee that
any engineer worth his salt will be watching NZ to see what happens at 1100
GMT on 31-Dec-1999.  The wise may choose to use direct satellite
communications!

You may have your own problems though!

The effect of 0000 GMT on 01-Jan-2000 will be global rather spread locally
across time zones.

I'm not expecting too many problems (famous last words!!).

I've already experienced the Y2K problem.  Occurred in 1993 for a computer
system that I had partial responsibility for.  System had a very dicey
hardware clock (it was bigger than a PC mother-board, not very reliable, and
had a very crude method of setting time and date - very similar to the way
of setting most bedside radio clocks, but had to be done with software).

After eliminating the clock as the source of the problem, it was a matter of
putting 2 and 2 together - the base time for the system was 1-Mar-1976, the
resolution of the timer (NOT the hardware clock) was 0.25 sec.  The time
that had elapsed was 2^31 "ticks"!!!  Since the system had been mainly
decomissioned we took the simplest solution of putting the clock back to a
year with the same calendar.

Digital computer systems had a potential problem of similar nature a couple
of years ago - May 18, if I remember correctly,  but can't remember which
year it was.  Date was significant because it was 10000 days since the base
time of 1-Jan-1960 for Unix systems.

If you are worried you can always try moving to a country which doesn't use
the Christian calendar.

Not trains, but interesting (I hope).

Cheers
Michael

>> >David Bennetts wrote:
>
>> >> The NSW Transport Minister Carl Scully has announced that trains will
stop
>> >> at 11.45 pm on New Years eve and resume at 12.15 am in the city
underground
>> >> area, probably quite a sensible idea if one is not sure about the
>> >> reliability of power supply and signalling, particularly with
underground
>> >> stations.


<remainder snipped>