One of the things that has cropped up over the last few years is the so-called ‘Millennium Bug’. Let’s get one thing straight right now. It is not a bug. It is merely a feature (mainly on IBM PC clones and porrly programmed embedded chips) which is now, quite literally, out of date. PCs were never designed to last this long and if the Year 2000 problem (Y2P) is a bug then a few years ago the ‘CGA bug’ was fixed where PCs couldn’t have more than four horrible colours. Do you see where I’m going with this.

The problem is that if a computer (or whatever has a date chip e.g Video Recorders) doesn’t recognise the year 2000, Databases and any other piece of software may fail or behave erratically. This is what needs to be sorted out. It is the sort of problem that should have been foreseen by the manufacturers of the 80s and 90s at least but this seemed to be pushed aside.

The fact of the matter is, there is a problem. Check your computer, it’s relatively simple. See :

• On most computers you can set the date manually to a minute before the year 2000.
• Power off the computer.
• Wait a few minutes.
• Power on the computer.
• Check the date, it should be after midnight on 01/01/2000 (or 01/01/00).
• Boot your OS and check software is still operating and giving the correct dates (be careful not to try time-limited software as it might be disabled permanently)
• Try doing searches in various pieces of software (eg Windows ‘Find’ using a date range crossing the millennium or similar for your computer).
• Should all this work then chances are, your machine is compliant. Don’t hold me to that though, try to find out from your hardware vendor exactly but at least it’s a start.
• Next step would be to use a testing program many of which can be found on the net. This will tell you exactly where any problems may be.
• The usual Y2P is where the date on a PC ‘rolls’ around to 1900 instead of 2000. This can usually be fixed by going into the bios (mainly by either pressing TAB, DEL or F1 but there may be others) and changing the date manually to 2000. After which the machine must be switched off to make sure that the date stays.
• Another check which must be made is just as above but using a minute to midnight on February 28 1999. Some computers won’t recognise the year 2000 as a leap year. Some computers allow February 29 to be entered manually but I wouldn’t bet on it.
• There are various BIOS updates for PCs which should give you a compliant PC. This of course doesn’t mean that the software is compliant. You should check for patches and updates for these too. And that includes the OS.

My Amiga A1200 and it’s OS is said to be compliant until about the 24th Century which should be long enough for me! Macs, I think, have always been pretty much compliant also. However it doesn’t matter how compliant the hardware is if the software (or firmware if an embedded system) isn’t. Keep alert.

Do not take anything on paper for granted including this. Check, check and while you’re there, check it again. Don’t have nightmares and enjoy the festivities. When the time comes – you’ll know.